Interesting slide show -- hadn't seen it yet.
Simmons presented at the Berlin ASPO conference earlier this year, where there was a good bit of discussion about Ghawar. From Mike Ruppert's
coverage:
With bottle brush drilling, a shaft is drilled horizontally over long distances with a number of brush-like openings... However, when the water table hits the horizontal shaft, often without warning, the whole field is virtually dead.. this is exactly what had already happened in Oman, Syria and Yemen.
William Kennedy noted afterwards, “... Ghawar ’s ultimate recoverable reserves in 1975 were estimated at 60 billion barrels. ...It had produced 55 billion barrels up to the end of 2003 and is still producing at 1.8 billion per annum. That shows you how close it might be to the end. When Ghawar dies, the world is officially in decline.”
No one, not even from the major oil companies or the economic camp rose to defend Saudi Arabia’s claim that it could increase production rapidly.
At the same conference, according to a
BBC article:
...Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, said... "For the time being there is no spare capacity. But we expect demand to increase by the fourth quarter (of the year) by three million barrels a day." and "If Saudi does not increase supply by 3 million barrels a day by the end of the year we will face, how can I say this, it will be very difficult. We will have difficult times. They must invest."
...But even Mr Birol admitted that Saudi production was "about flat". Three million extra barrels a day would mean a huge 30% leap in output in just a few months.
...One delegate laughed so hard he had to support himself on a table.
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