A satellite-enabled peek at Saudi oil.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Khurais Starts Up

Something of interest from the announcement that the Khurais project has started pumping:

- The project involved drilling 420 wells and building four oil processing facilities and two more for gas. More than 28,000 workers and 26 contractors worked at Khurais.

- The field needs two million barrels per day of water injection but lies 190 km from Aramco's Qurayyah seawater treatment plant. That plant was expanded and pipelines built to pump the water needed from the Gulf to the fields. Aramco drilled 120 wells alone for water injection.


Last year, I related that the original plan was for 310 wells including 167 producers, 125 injectors, and 17 observation wells. So unless they decided they needed 100 more observation wells, the balance is for a lot more producers.

6 comments:

Average Citizen said...

Isn't it likely that if they continue to pump water into the well it may collapse?

JoulesBurn said...

I'm not sure what you mean by "collapse". They have been pumping water into the Ghawar field for 40 years. It's the only good way to get the oil out.

Anonymous said...

What a work this sight is! Thanks for sharing!

If they go for a significant increase in producers in a massive economic downturn where they are supposed to have shut in huge amount of capacity what do you think is the reason?

Compansationg decline in other fields or low flows in the first planned wells?

I'm curious about your thoughts :)

/L

JoulesBurn said...

I think they were having problems reaching their targeted production with the initial well plan. They are also using a lot of multiple lateral wells, despite initially planning to use only single lateral horizontals (although it is possible these might be only in the tightest areas such as in the south).

Reaching the 1.2 million barrels/day was more critical than how much it cost. That could be either because they really needed it (decline elsewhere) or because of pride/image.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your answer!

I guess we will find out the answer if the economic turnoround are sustainable and the demand goes up again...

/L

Je Suis Devenue Maman said...

Lovelly post