I believe that they had similar complaints in early 2006. Despite diligent efforts, they were unable to find buyers for all of their oil, even their "light/sweet oil."

In round numbers, their cumulative inability to find buyers for all of their oil, through March, 2008, was over 600 mb--the difference between what they would have produced at their 2005 rate and what they actually produced (EIA, C+C).

Now we hear that Saudi Arabia is able to recover 50 percent of all the oil under Saudi soil. And that is not the only good news, they will soon be able to recover 70 percent of OOIP.

And next we'll hear that the Saudis really do know how to get the caramel inside a Caramilk bar. And like the old Cadbury commercial suggests, featuring the devil himself, such knowledge comes courtesy of a Faustinian bargain.

The company expects to increase the amount of oil it can recover from its fields to 70 percent from 50 percent over the next 20 years, Mr. Saggaf said, adding another 80 billion barrels to reserves.

80 billion over 20 years is 4 billion a year, which nicely balances their production rate, so this could be considered an easy way to be able to claim that reserves will continue to remain constant without them actually having to find any more of the stuff.

Do we have analysis of any field to show the total amount they produced in their lifetime VS the amounts of oil they were originally (or subsequently estimated) to contain, both for OOIP and URR? (On a fiel by field basis, not by country)

just in case my question is poorly worded here is a crude example:

field ZARGON (fictional name) end of life produced total 10BBl;
descovery estimate 1970 was 12BBL URR
1975 revised to 15BBL URR
1980 revised to 14BBL URR
etc.etc..

I guess am am asking what oil did it produce compared to what oil it was thought could be produced.

Marco.

Technically, I guess they are not lying. They cannot find buyers of additional oil at current prices. Makes perfect sense. But we should quit caring and move on and face the future, where there will not be sufficient oil for our happy motoring lifestyle.

Darwin,

I wouldn't completely discount the KSA claims but it's fair to always be suspicious of their claims. Difficult to use "average recovery" numbers when talking about a particular field. Even in the KSA carbonate fields a 50% RF is possible. There were reports that a big ($10 billion) horizontal drilling effort in Gahwar Fld in the late 90's that stablized decline (for a while) and cut water production. But it has also been reported that excessive production rates have dramaticly cut the ult recover from the field.

As far as Khurais Fld goes I'm not to familiar but a couple of important facts. The main field area will produce Arabian light crude and not the heavy stuff that's becoming more difficult to market. They are also installing a pipeline to deliver 2 million bbl of salt water per day for injection to help maintain reservoir pressure as production proceeds. This should help ult recovery greatly. I also don't think most of the existing wells are horizontal but that could be altered down the road as the water level rises.

But a key element of ult recovery is often missing...the time element. I've been studying a field in Texas that has produced over 300 million bls of oil over the last 60 years (about 50 - 55% recovery. It's still doing several hundred bopd. And it will keep producing even at the current 99% water cut. Come back in 30 or 40 years and ult rec may be 70%. Or maybe I'll get in there and drill some horizontal holes and speed that time frame up.

So when anyone throws out an ult rec number they should show the anticipated decline rate. Which brings us back to the key element of PO: it's not the amount of reserves in the ground but the maximum daily production rate of those reserves at any given point in the field's life.

I was not aware that Saudi was getting a 50 percent recovery rate. The number thrown around most is 30 to 35 percent for all the fields in the world, slightly higher for sandstone reservoirs than carbonate reservoirs.

The 50% figure comes from Abqaiq, where that claim has some validity.

I discussed this a bit in:

Abqaiq and Eat It Too

Carbonates are extremely variable, so one cannot say that Ghawar should only yield 35%. However, Ghawar isn't Abqaiq either, and most indications are that the the residual oil saturation (the amount left after the waterflood) will be higher across Ghawar than in Abqaiq. See also:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2563

As far as getting to 70%, they are just extrapolating what they expect to get from Abqaiq. Sort of an extrapolation of an extrapolation. Judge accordingly.

So then its the over abundance of supply thats driving up the price.

Sort of makes sense along with the rest of the financial news as of late.

(sarc)

Isn’t there a basic math problem here.

If the 50% and 70% relate to the total amount of oil that can be extracted from what was there in the first place.

And if the delta between 50% and 70% is 80 Billion barrels.

Then this would indicate there was only 400 billion barrels there in the first place.

If this is correct then it is possible to extrapolate several possible scenarios one of which is that the person making the statement is really bad at math.

I was at a lunch reception at the Offshore Technology COnvention in Houston in May. I happened to be standing next to some Schlumberger reps and Saudi Aramco engineers.

We started discussing recovery rates. The Saudi rep said that the current recovery rate is 35%, but there is technology in the pipeline to move the recovery rate up to 50%. And eventually, the Saudis expect to see 70%.

The Schlumberger reps were nodding in agreement. Then one of the Schlumberger guys said "We love working with the Saudis because they have the resources and desire to do it all right."

It was a very upbeat assessment for the Saudi fields and oil-future.