NEW Giant Saudi Oil Field Key to fixing our oil woes!

[shaunish]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,373452,00.html

This is all over the news websites suddenly. I am going to call BS here, any reserves in SA have been explored and most are connected. They are just putting this out there so the market won't drop like a stone tomorrow.

[Zippyjuan]

This field is said to have about 27 billion barrels of oil- just over the amount the US consumes in a year. It is NOT a new field- it was found in 1957 and has not been worth trying to get the oil out of it so far because it is so difficult and costly to extract. The fact that they will have to pump in 2 billion barrels a day of water to get the oil out means that production will not be easy to maintain. Pumping water in helps get more oil out, but it eventually dilutes the oil to a point where it is not really usable. It is usually used only when a well starts to decline, not when it is started up.


Workers are also building a huge sea-water injection system to pump more than 2 million barrels of water per day from the Gulf into 120 wells. That will maintain the necessary pressure underground to push the oil to the surface.



Production of their top oil field, Ghawar, has been believed to be declining. This increase in production (not a new field found, just an old one being finally tapped) might only be to offest those declines. They have been putting in more wells there at Ghawar) but output had not increased. That is why they are going after the more difficult sources like Khurais.
The true state of Ghawar is unknown since the Saudis and many Arab nations do not offer any verified figures of reserves. The reported 70 billion barrels in Ghawar has not changed despite pumping out some 5 million barrels a day. In 1975 it was estimated to contain 60 billion barrels so one could question the now 70 billion barrel figure. They have been pumping water into that field since 1965.

The fact that they are starting on a field that requires the pumping in of 2 billion barrels of water a day just to get oil out would seem to indicate that they do not have any remaining easy to get at oil and even adding more wells to Ghawar would not increase productivity. Are they too starting to run out of oil?

[Kludge]

Hopefully, the Saudi's will nationalize the reserves and turn it over to us as an act of goodwill.

[tmosley]

Hopefully, the Saudi's will nationalize the reserves and turn it over to us as an act of goodwill.

Or we'll kill them.

[Uncle Emanuel Watkins]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,373452,00.html

This is all over the news websites suddenly. I am going to call BS here, any reserves in SA have been explored and most are connected. They are just putting this out there so the market won't drop like a stone tomorrow.

It isn't a matter of supply. There are billions and billions of barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico and consider that only takes in account the half of it that the oil companies are being allowed to drill in.
It is the heat factor. We are all getting hot. Someone forgot to turn the stove off so puritan Americans will be responsible for fixing the problem. So, higher and higher taxes on oil will be necessary to fix global warming.

[Zippyjuan]

There have been a lot of permits issued for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. One problem is that it costs up to $100 million to drill one well so you do not want to be randomly drilling trying to find oil at that price. And so far, most of the ones they have tried have come up empty. The most recent find was extremely deep- 30,000 feet or almost five miles down. Two miles to the bottom of the sea and a further three miles of rock to get to the deposit. Estimates of the yield are from three to fifteen billion barrels. We use about 7 billion barrels a year so less than one year of our consumption -unless it is at the highest end of the estimate.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5318776.stm

'Huge oil find' in Gulf of Mexico

Chevron said the oil field may be a "significant discovery"
Three companies led by US-based Chevron say they have found an oil field under the Gulf of Mexico that could boost US reserves by more than 50%.
Drilling at a test well yielded "a flow rate of more than 6,000 barrels of crude oil per day", Chevron said.

The discovery may rival the biggest US oil field in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.

Experts caution that the true size of the oil field is not yet known and it will be a long time before any of the oil there enters the market.

"In the last 15 years, there've been so many great projects that started out and then petered out," Matt Simmons, the head of a group of energy investment bankers, told Reuters news agency.
Recently in the Gulf of Mexico, "there's been a lot more bitter disappointments than phenomenal surprises", he said.


The head of an energy consulting firm, Art Smith, told the Associated Press news agency that despite the discovery, the US will still be importing more than 50% of its oil needs.

"The US still has a big difference between its consumption and indigenous production," Mr Smith said.

Experts said the oil from the well is unlikely to be available for many years and the discovery is not going to ease spiralling global oil prices.

'Lowest capacity'

Three firms - US oil giant Chevron, Norway's Statoil and US-based Devon Energy - said test results under the Gulf of Mexico "may indicate a significant discovery".

"The full magnitude of the field's potential is still being defined," Statoil said.

Chevron first revealed it was prospecting for oil in the area in September 2004.

The oil field is located 435 km (270 miles) south-west of New Orleans and 282 km (175 miles) offshore.

According to John Kilduff, an analyst quoted by the AFP news agency, the new oil field could produce 400,000 barrels for 20 years - even at its lowest capacity.




Boosting the US reserves by up to 50% (based on the high estimate) may sound like a lot, but our current proven reserves are only about three times our annual consumption. They spent two years researching and doing test exploration on thsi field, took about a year just to drill that deep, and will still probably take a further five years to get the oil to market.

$3.7 billion worth of oil leases in the Gulf have been sold just since March. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/ideas/bal-id.shell15jun15,0,152013.story and over 2000 wells have been drilled there since 1992.

Some figures for 2007:
http://www.peoplelandandwater.gov/mms/mms_05-12-08_advances-in-oil.cfm

Additionally, offshore operators drilled 94 exploratory wells and 48 development wells in 2007. Of the 48 development wells they drilled, 60 percent were in ultra-deepwater, water depths greater than 5,000 feet. In 2007 oil and gas operators announced eight new deepwater discoveries, with the deepest in 7,400 feet of water.



This means that about eight percent of the holes drilled in the Gulf in 2007 yielded any oil. If you figure $100 million a hole, (not including any other costs like the price of the lease or prior exploration), about a billion dollars per successful find. Then there is the question of how much oil each find will yield. Then build the infrastructure to get the oil from the well to a refinery. It is expensive to find new oil. It is not just lying around waiting for us to scoop it up and dump into our cars. "Water depth" means just that' how far down just to the seabed. Then they start to drill into the ground from there.

Update: I found a map of oil leases in the Golf. You may be surprised how much of the Golf has been leased out for oil and gas exploration. PDF format. http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/lsesale/mau_gom_pa.pdf