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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (21978)	6/15/2008 9:45:14 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 36917

ace on June 14, 2008 - 8:23pm Khursaniyah's capacity, according to Aramco, is 0.5 mbd. I think that Khursaniyah's actual production will be, at best, 0.30-0.35 mbd. Aramco's head Jumah would admit only to a 0.3 mbd production capability when he said that "Khursaniyah would be producing 0.3 mbd within a month" but would eventually pump 0.5 mbd. bloomberg.com. Khursaniyah, including Abu Hadriya and Fadhili (AFK), is a large workover project as these three fields have already produced about 2 billion barrels (IHS, Rand & Simmons). Khursaniyah peaked at 0.21 mbd in 1979 which dropped down to 0.05 mbd in 1995. Abu Hadriyah and Fadhili peaked in 1977 at 0.13 mbd and 0.06 mbd, respectively. I agree with Matt Simmons when he says on page 221 of his book that he is amazed that the AFK project "to rehabilitate old, underperforming oilfields targets a production level of 500,000 barrels a day for a very long period of time. It is even more surprising that so many oil experts then simply accept these aggressive predictions without question or comment, as if predicting high production were tantamount to achieving it". The ultimate recoverable oil reserves of AFK is probably about 5 Gb. If 2 Gb has been produced then 3 Gb oil remains. Since the easy oil would have been produced first from AFK, a suitable depletion rate of remaining harder to produce oil might be around 4%/yr. Applying 4%/yr to the remaining 3 Gb gives a realistic production rate of 0.33 mbd which is close to the previous estimate of 0.30-0.35 mbd. The chart below shows an update for Saudi Arabia's (including half of Neutral Zone) forecast oil production (excluding NGL). It assumes that the economic URR is 185 Gb which represents an average recovery factor of 32% of an estimated OIIP of 580 Gb. The actual production data is from the EIA. It is interesting that the OPEC OMR June 2008 says that Saudi Arabia (incl half of NZ) produced 9.03 mbd for Mar 08 (excl NGL); 8.98 mbd, Apr 08; and 9.13 mbd, May 08. opec.org. page 32 click to enlarge For more info about Saudi Arabia see section 5 of theoildrum.com and theoildrum.com Perhaps OPEC and Saudi Arabia will be making a statement on OPEC's real production capability at the June 22 meeting which might resolve the "peak oil" debate. bloomberg.com. This meeting is different than other OPEC meetings because OPEC has invited heads of state from importing nations and bank executives. It is worth noting that the OPEC Secretary General said that "The quota is 'irrelevant' under today's market circumstances, el-Badri said today. A meeting of energy ministers from producing and consuming nations at the International Energy Forum in Rome in April achieved 'nothing' to solve high oil prices". theoildrum.com