Foxfyre wrote:I certainly don't have your expertise or experience in that HS, but I am an oil patch kid, have a kid who is an engineer in the business, and am acquainted with folks here in town who run petroleum drilling schools all over the world including Saudi Arabia. Their opinion of Ghawar is that it has had an amazing six decade run that is probably coming to an end, but it still has 10-15 years of good production left at current reserve estimates and those estimates have been underestimated numerous times over the years as have reserves in our own Permian Basin where they are still managing to drill and find oil. The folks from the school do say that Ghawar is down from a peak of 5.5 million barrels to a current approximately 4.5 million barrels a day, but that is still substantial.
Foxfyre, good numbers and their magnitude are important, otherwise, conclusions would be erronous.
I don't know where you get your numbers for Ghawar but they are wrong.
First, proven reserves for Ghawar are estimated to be 60 to 100 Gb, now. At a rate of 2 Gb/year, that would mean AT LEAST 30 to 50 years of good production, not 10-15 !
But should I remind you that in 1975, the USGS has stated that Ghawar URR (proven+ probable + possible reserves) amounted to 60 Gb and up to now, cumulated production from Ghawar has been ... 65 Gb, that is Ghawar should have been empty, void, zeroed. Yet, its water cut is just around 30% (mean world value is 75%, in France, some wells' water cut is more than 95% and it's still profitable !).
Second, Ghawar is producing 5 Mb/d for years, even peakoilers wouldn't venture to say it's peaking now or in the next 2, 3 years (see for example the peak oil sites theoildrum.com or peakoil.com).