 | DrumBeat: May 8, 2008 | The Oil Drum | A protein possibility for the "oil we eat:" the in-vitro meat beast! |  |
45 comments on Saudi Arabia's Ghawar Isn't Sinking (but has apparently moved)
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Garyp, there are many high dunes in the area but there are also many areas with no dunes. Some of it is just hardpan desert with no dunes at all. As the article states, there are irrigated wheat fields that cuts across the southern tip of Ghawar. Also, even where there are dunes, there are stable clearings among the dunes. They have a name but it escapes me at the moment. Anyway, it is in these stable clearings that the wells and gosps are placed.
Ron Patterson
Ron,
I think you mean sabkhas, the most extreme examples being around Shaybah. However, Ghawar really isn't like that either. It most parts, the wells all look like that suggested by the photo below from the middle of Uthmaniyah. They bulldoze the sand into berms surrounding a big flat area for the drilling equipment etc.
Shedgum seems to be less sandy, and as a consequence, it is harder to spot the wells.
Indeed, which is why I mention spot height measurement before. It probably is possible to get some heights - but its nowhere near as simple as an area where you are talking of a hard surface over the entire area. Don't forget SAR is an interferometry based approach, you need something to base measurements on.
Given the other question marks it would need some serious exposure of real data to know if the measurements were credible and what the error bars were.