This is a repeat of JoulesBurn's post on Abqaiq from May 2008, which may be of interest to those reading Heading Out's post. -- Gail

Abqaiq, an aging super giant Saudi Arabian oil field, has yielded over 11 billion barrels of oil since it was discovered in November of 1940. Its past provides us with the poster child for easy oil. The first well flowed at 9720 barrels per day, a far cry from today's land finds where multiple horizontal laterals are necessary to coax lesser quantities from stingier reservoirs. But Abqaiq's more recent past paints a more muddled picture, as efforts to extract the remaining oil have produced mixed results. More advanced recovery methods have been successfully employed in some parts of the field, but these have likewise revealed unexpected geological complexities which have in turn hindered recovery in other areas. Many of the new challenges encountered in Abqaiq are relevant to the future prospects for other fields, particularly Ghawar and Khurais. This article will evaluate the development status of the field using satellite imagery to identify recent drilling in correlation with several recent technical reports on new developments and strategies for maintaining production.

This is a guest post by Alexis Ziegler. Alexis is a communitarian, builder, orchardist and environmental activist living in central Virginia. He is the author of a recently published book, "Culture Change: Civil Liberty, Peak Oil, and the End of Empire". More information can be found at conev.org.

In the couple of years since Culture Change was first published, much has changed. Culture Change predicted that in 2007 we were "at or near" global peak oil production, and that we would face a "large economic contraction" as a result.¹ In July 2008 oil production hit an all-time high of 74.8 million barrels per day and oil prices reached an unprecedented height of $147.27 in daily trading.² Since then, the global economy has collapsed into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Oil prices have oscillated wildly, and oil production has declined as global demand has decreased.

Meanwhile, production from the giant oil fields which make up the lion's share of global production has continued to decline. There is a growing consensus, at least among those concerned about peak oil, that the July 2008 peak of production will probably remain as the all-time historic high for global oil production.³ As of the most recent measure, more than 60% of global oil fields are past peak and are now in permanent decline.⁴

Recently, we have had two new articles aiming to put to rest people's fears about peak oil. One is from the New York Times:

Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries

It talks about the many discoveries this year, and how, if they continue at the pace they have in the first half, they will be the best since 2000.

The other is from the October Scientific American, called

Squeezing More Oil from the Ground.

It is behind a pay wall (you can get it for $5.95). There is also a draft version available on line. Its premise seems to be that there are a lot of promising areas that we have not yet explored. When you put this together with advances in drilling and the promises of secondary and tertiary recovery, there is a good chance that oil production will not peak for many years.

In this post, we will look a little more at these articles, and see why peak oil, and perhaps the financial issues associated with peak oil, are still an issue, regardless of what these articles may suggest.

In the first two posts in this series (1 and 2), I discussed the requirements and challenges of transitioning our global economy to renewable sources of energy. My interim conclusion was that there are serious doubts about our ability to affect any significant transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Much of this uncertainty is the result of uncertain systemic energy return on energy invested. In other words, when all inputs are taken into account—as must be done where we’re talking about shifting energy sources on a civilizational level—can a world powered by solar and wind power itself the way it has on oil, gas, and coal?

The key take away is precisely this uncertainty: we simply don’t know if renewables—either current or potential future technology—will be up for the job. Where does that leave us? This discussion—and many others related to Peak Oil—is really a matter of what is known as the “Precautionary Principle,” or what degree of consensus is required before we embark on a course of action that may result in irreversible harm. Because the Precautionary Principle has such broad application in discussions of Peak Oil, I’ve modeled this post as a discussion of the principle itself, using the issue of renewables transition as but one example of its application.