[Peakoil-announce] Fwd: Saudi Arabian oil in decline

[Alex P]

The news is that Saudi production is declining at 2% a year.

As Matt Simmons said, if Saudi Arabia is in decline, then the world is in 
decline. Looks like we have already passed the peak.

Alex
O4O4873828

ACT Peak Oil
http://act-peakoil.org


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Saudi Aramco boosts drilling efforts to offset declining fields
Dubai (Platts)--11Apr2006

http://www.platts.com/Oil/News/8377179.xml

Saudi Aramco's mature crude oil fields are expected to decline at a
gross average rate of 8%/year without additional maintenance and
drilling, a Saudi Aramco spokesman said Tuesday.  

But Saudi Aramco has taken a number of measures to offset a decline in
output from the country's aging oil fields, the spokesman added. 

"A variety of remedial activities are always being taken in oil fields
influencing their effective decline rates," the spokesman said. "The
drilling of additional development wells in the producing fields is
Saudi Aramco's standard practice to offset normal declines of older
wells." 

This is particularly important when oil fields are progressively
depleted under a well thought out strategy of maximizing the sweep and
displacement efficiencies, leading to high ultimate oil recovery, the
spokesman said. 

"This maintain potential drilling in mature fields combined with a
multitude of remedial actions and the development of new fields, with
long plateau lives, lowers the composite decline rate of producing
fields to around 2%," the spokesman said. 

Underscoring these efforts, Saudi Aramco signed two contracts with J.
Ray McDermott Middle East and McDermott Arabia Company Ltd, subsidiaries
of J. Ray McDermott, to detail design, procure, fabricate, transport and
install offshore facilities for the Maintain Potential and Khursaniyah
Upstream Pipeline programs, Saudi Aramco said April 6. 

The first contract includes two drilling support structures in Zuluf
field to be installed in December 2006 and one new wellhead production
platform in the Central Safaniya oil field to support onstream start-up
in May 2007, Saudi Aramco said. 

Three additional wellhead platforms will be installed in the Central
Safaniya and Zuluf fields by December 2007. New associated flowlines
will connect these platforms to existing offshore tie-in (manifold)
platforms. 

To support increasing production in the Central Safaniya field, a new
tie-in platform (Safaniya TP-18) will also be engineered, procured,
fabricated and installed by December 2007, along with a 24-inch
trunkline between it and a subsea connection on the new 42-inch
trunkline flowing to the onshore Safaniya GOSP-1, installed under a
separate contract.

The second contract is associated with the subsea portion, some 22 km
(14 miles) long, of the 30-inch gas pipeline from Abu Ali Island to an
onshore site at Khursaniyah to be installed by May 2007. 

This subsea portion is part of the new 66 km BKTG-1 pipeline that will
transport 220 million cubic feet/day of gas from Abu Ali Plant to
Khursaniyah Gas Plant. 

Glen Carey, glen_carey at platts.com
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