Ghawar Field

From Free net encyclopedia

Ghawar Field is an oil field in Saudi Arabia. It is located about 100 km WSW from the city of Dhahran in the Eastern Province. Measuring 280 km by 30 km, this is by far the largest conventional oil field in the world. The operations and oil recovery have been nationalized in the form of Saudi Aramco. The company and Saudi government carefully guard production reports on a per oil field basis, much known about the field since nationalization comes from third party sources or former employees.

1 History
2 Production
- 2.1 Field Reserves
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

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History

Historically Ghawar has been subdivided into five production areas, from north to south, 'Ain Dar and Shedgum, 'Uthmaniyah, Hawiyah and Haradh. The major oasis of Al-Hasa and the city of Al-Hofuf are located on Ghawar's east flank, corresponding to the 'Uthmaniyah production area. Ghawar was discovered in 1948 and put on stream in 1951.

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Production

Approximately 60-65% of all Saudi oil produced between 1948 and 2000 came from Ghawar. Cumulative production to the end of 2005 was about 60 billion barrels (based on Croft). Currently, Ghawar is estimated to produce over 5 million barrels (800,000 m³) of oil a day (6.25% of global production).

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Field Reserves

Saudi Aramco has stated that it has more than 71 billion barrels of proven reserves remaining. Some people, such as Matthew Simmons in his book Twilight in the Desert, suggest that production from the Ghawar field and Saudi Arabia, may soon peak. However, Simmons' work has been strongly criticised by Aramco officials such as Nansen Saleri.

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