Ghawar fading faster than anyone expected

[kenneal - lagger]

Ghawar fading faster than anyone expected according to this article.

[adam2]

It looks as though "twilight in the dessert" may have been a little premature, but that depletion is now starting to become significant.

And of course we should remember that these recently published figures are themselves almost certainly optimistic. They are issued as part of a bond prospectus to encourage inward investment into the Saudi oil industry.

[fuzzy]

Reprinted from the late lamented oildrum:

http://www.321energy.com/editorials/sta ... 51807.html

I have noticed this month that if I search for something exactly, that I know existed, on a search engine, that every extra character in a string brings up gibberish until I have typed the exact full details. Like some sort of hashing program to avoid hits.

[kenneal - lagger]

I'll read that tonight before I go to sleep, fuzzy.


Like heck!!!

[BritDownUnder]

Some people say that Ghawar was ruined by too much water injection and some of the oil that would have been 'extractable' at a slower extraction rate now cannot be.

Meanwhile, the Saudis are realising that you cannot eat oil and their rapidly expanding, Wahhabi indoctrinated population need something to eat as well as praying five times daily.

SALIC is an investment arm in the Kingdom of Saudi Public Investment Fund.

"They're a sovereign fund and invest for food security and livestock production all over the world," Mr Thomas said.

A great radio interview from the farmer who is set to make $60m out of this deal. He seemed really down to earth but said that his children were not ambitious enough to run the farms and were happy to get the $60m in cash instead.

[kenneal - lagger]

With global warming in mind, I wouldn't have thought that Australia would be the best investment for food growing. I know that they have been suffering drought conditions frequently in the central/eastern part of the country but how is the west doing BDU?

[vtsnowedin]

Reprinted from the late lamented oildrum:

http://www.321energy.com/editorials/sta ... 51807.html

I have noticed this month that if I search for something exactly, that I know existed, on a search engine, that every extra character in a string brings up gibberish until I have typed the exact full details. Like some sort of hashing program to avoid hits.

That is an intriguing observation. Have you observed it on more then the google search engine?

[fuzzy]

I would only use ggle at work [standard PC desktop], it's usually duckduckgo at home. The thing is I only search for obscure, unpopular with MSM things. Usually because the old links, which I always bookmark, have died.

If I typed 'Kim and Justin' it wouldn't happen. I think they do try to push their anti-agenda down the hits and bury stuff in spam. I suspect copyright owners now have more powers to remove original stuff which shouldn't be public for free.

[BritDownUnder]

With global warming in mind, I wouldn't have thought that Australia would be the best investment for food growing. I know that they have been suffering drought conditions frequently in the central/eastern part of the country but how is the west doing BDU?

Hello Ken. I am not sure about the West of Australia but there is a lot of arable land over here and there is probably some that is not in drought at any one time.
While these comments are not directly related to the Ghawar oil field it is probable that the Saudis are investing to provide a return when their oil production does decline. One can only presume that the future for Australia even with global warming is probably better than the future for Saudi Arabia in the minds of these investors. I read that many Arab countries are also investing in farming land in Sudan. The problem over in Sudan, according to that article, is that the people who actually own the land are not being told that it is being sold to someone else. I see trouble ahead.

[raspberry-blower]

With global warming in mind, I wouldn't have thought that Australia would be the best investment for food growing. I know that they have been suffering drought conditions frequently in the central/eastern part of the country but how is the west doing BDU?

Hello Ken. I am not sure about the West of Australia but there is a lot of arable land over here and there is probably some that is not in drought at any one time.
While these comments are not directly related to the Ghawar oil field it is probable that the Saudis are investing to provide a return when their oil production does decline. One can only presume that the future for Australia even with global warming is probably better than the future for Saudi Arabia in the minds of these investors. I read that many Arab countries are also investing in farming land in Sudan. The problem over in Sudan, according to that article, is that the people who actually own the land are not being told that it is being sold to someone else. I see trouble ahead.

There have been reports of rioting in Sudan against the incumbent Government. Related per chance?

[kenneal - lagger]

................There have been reports of rioting in Sudan against the incumbent Government. Related per chance?

Looks like the answer is "Yes."

The effort may yet pay off, but early signs augur ill. Many Sudanese describe the plan as little more than a naked land grab that’s depriving them of their ancestral fields while enriching the government and a foreign corporate elite. The anger has spread from villages to cities, becoming part of a larger uprising—the so-called Revolution of the Hungry—that constitutes the gravest threat to Bashir since he seized power. Protests triggered in part by soaring bread prices have taken place in more than 30 cities and towns since mid-December, and at least 50 people have been killed. The unrest shows no signs of abating. As one farmer from Gezira state, not far south of Khartoum, told me, “We’ll protest until we’re dead or we get our way.�

But few villages are giving in, and with climate change also shrinking their grazing land, anger at the government and its corporate partners has spilled over into—and in a number of instances fueled—the recent countrywide unrest. Dozens of locals burned down the Nile pump station at Zayed Al Khair, in 2016. That was the first of many demonstrations during which participants honed slogans such as “Freedom, peace, and justice! Revolution is the choice of the people!�—it rhymes in Arabic—that are being chanted across the country.

[BritDownUnder]

As an aside to the oil field I looked up the available arable land in the world and Australia comes top in the available land per capita. Sudan is nowhere near the top - they just have a corrupt government. One country to watch is Ukraine which has a very high available amount of arable land per capita. Ever wondered why the Ukraine is being so hotly contested for a country with no oil? Maybe you have just found the answer.

Personally I am surprised why the Saudis have left it so late in investing their money until it appears that their oilfields are showing signs of declining and electrical transportation is becoming feasible (for land transportation anyway). They should have started in the 1970s but they chose to invest in other things and misallocate their money.

There may come a time when agricultural land is more valuable than an oilfield.

Boring statistics. Australia has about 400,000 sq km of arable land and about 3,000,000 sq km of pasture land. The total UK land area is about 240,000 sq km not all of it useable agricultural land. Believe it or not Australia also has about 10 times as much 'renewable' water resources per capita as the UK. However I suspect the Australian water resources are nowhere near the useful land and that is probably why the country has a lot of droughts.

[mikepepler]

It strikes me that one of the most significant points may not be the lost production, but that it is *cheap* high-EROEI production that has been lost.

[kenneal - lagger]

BDU, the amount of water available per hectare has a huge effect on the productivity of the land. In the UK we can graze 1.5 cattle or 10 sheep per hectare year round with a lot more on summer only grazing but I doubt that is possible on most Australian grazing.

[vtsnowedin]

Consider to be arable does not mean you have sufficient water to irrigate it. Much of Sudan is the Sahara desert and without the irrigation water from the Nile and it's tributary would be totally useless. As it is they import about 630 million dollars worth of wheat each year from Russia. They pay a lot of their bills with gold mined in country but still are spending four dollars for every three produced. There real problem is too many people compared to the production capacity of the land , economy and the water supply.
The water supply issue also applies to vast stretches of the Australian out back.