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The World’s Five Most Important Oil Fields
Submitted by Nick Cunningham of OilPrice.com
Here Are The World’s Five Most Important Oil Fields
Much has been made about the role that hydraulic fracturing – or fracking -- has played in revolutionizing the energy landscape, unlocking vast new reserves of oil trapped in shale rock. This “tight oil” is pouring into the global pool of oil supplies at a crucial time, preventing oil prices from spiking in an age of high demand and geopolitical turmoil.
But the world still relies overwhelmingly on conventional oil production from existing fields, many of which are in decline. The Middle East has dominated the world of oil for half a century and as the list below shows, it remains king. Here are the top five most important oil fields in the world.
1. Ghawar (Saudi Arabia) The legendary Ghawar field has been churning out oil since the early 1950s, allowing Saudi Arabia to claim the mantle as the world’s largest oil producer and the only country with sufficient spare capacity to act as a swing producer. Holding an estimated 70 billion barrels of remaining reserves, Ghawar alone has more oil reserves than all but seven other countries, according to the Energy Information Administration. Some oil analysts believe that Ghawar passed its peak perhaps a decade ago, but Saudi Arabia’s infamous lack of transparency keeps everyone guessing. Nevertheless, it remains the world’s largest oil field, both in terms of reserves and production. It continues to produce 5 million barrels per day (bpd).
2. Burgan (Kuwait) Just behind Ghawar is another massive oil field located in the Middle East. The Burgan field was originally discovered in 1938, but production didn’t begin until a decade later. The field holds an estimated 66 to 72 billion barrels of reserves, which accounts for more than half of Kuwait’s total, and it produces between 1.1 and 1.3 million bpd.
3. Safaniya (Saudi Arabia) The Safaniya field is the world’s largest offshore oil field. Located in the Persian Gulf, the Safaniya field is thought to hold more than 50 billion barrels of oil. It is Saudi Arabia’s second largest producing field behind Ghawar, churning out 1.5 million bpd. Like Saudi Arabia’s other fields, Safaniya is very mature as it has been producing for nearly 60 years, but Saudi Aramco is working hard to extend its operating life.
4. Rumaila (Iraq) Iraq’s largest oil field is the Rumaila, which holds an estimated 17.8 billion barrels of oil. Located in southern Iraq, Rumaila was highly sought after when the Iraqi government put blocks up for bid in 2009. BP and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) are working together to develop the giant field along with Iraq’s state-owned South Oil Company. The field now produces around 1.5 million bpd, but its operators have plans to boost that production to 2.85 million bpd over the next couple of years.
5. West Qurna-2 (Iraq) Also located in southern Iraq, the West Qurna-2 field is Iraq’s second largest, holding nearly 13 billion barrels of oil reserves. The West Qurna field was divided in two and auctioned off to international oil companies. Russia’s Lukoil took control of West Qurna-2 and successfully began production earlier this year at an initial 120,000 bpd. Lukoil plans on lifting production to 1.2 million bpd by the end of 2017. The neighboring West Qurna-1 field – operated by a partnership of ExxonMobil, BP, Eni SpA, and PetroChina – holds 8.6 billion barrels of oil reserves. They hope to increase production from 300,000 bpd to more than 2.3 million bpd over the next half-decade.
It’s clear that the Middle East is still the center of the universe when it comes to oil. Despite their age, these supergiants remain the oil fields of tomorrow. And as the tight oil revolution in the U.S. plays out, these fields will remain, and the world will continue to depend heavily on the fortunes of a few countries in the Middle East
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Dont worry. A kazillion fracking wells with a half life of 2 minutes will solve the problem when the Middle East goes off line!
K@
It seems that the half life (2 minutes) is 50% higher than my estimates.
I thought this was an odd article when I saw it on OilPrice.com.
To be pedantic, let's not confuse "most important" with "biggest".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_fields
Regards,
Cooter
50 years from now the discovery of North Slope oil will be considered a most destabilizing event in our time. The world stopped it's drive toward energy efficiency (I had a Mazda 626 that got 44 highway MPG in 1986) and sprawl and SUVs became the growth engine of the US economy.
The 30 years of pretending oil will be cheap forever will result in a lot of hungry people, soon.
And they still cuss Jimmy Carter.
Leadership isn't about telling you what you need to hear, it's about telling you what you want to hear.
See? We know the difference between needs and wants.
/sarc
I got handed the bag of inflation from Nixons decoupling from gold, plus the oil crisis, and there publican dirty-trixters call me a wimp and wuss when I try to promote conservation instead of over consumption. How's the Reagan hockey stick debt chart working out for the country now?
Pretending, indeed (and this was eight years ago):
http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=11520
Fascinating. Now I understand why America had to protect itself from Iraq's WMD problem. After all, it had nothing to do with oil...right?
right, and Euro economies run on rainbows and skittles shat out of a unicorn's ass... only the US had anything to gain
/gimmeafuckinbreak
That's correct, but it's even more "complicated". If you check out which countries (and their oil companies) had drilling contracts with Saddam Hussein, and with further contracts pending, you'd find that the US had strong competition from France, China and even Russia.
Given the very high gas prices in the EU and the anti-Saddam stance of the US (under Bush & Clinton), the US Big Oil had virtually NO chance of winning those bids. They needed a "game changer". And got it.
Questions? Here all week. Try the salad bar.
And I will always wonder if the oil for food situation pre-war was keeping prices low on the world market and if that didn't give incentive to those wanting higher prices and closer to the vest control.
who, you mean Russia? because if anyone had anything to gain from utterly derailing oil-for-food, it was them
suggest you read up on the history of that program, it's a real eye opener...
Of the few bids won by US oil companies in post-war Iraq, the fiscal terms are so poor the work is scarcely profitable. So if the purpose of the war was to get American companies' access to Iraqi oil, it failed miserably.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Doctrine
After all, it had nothing to do with oil...right?
It had little to do with oil and all to do with the MIC making billions off weapons and munitions. The $1 trillion+ dumped into the war went somewhere. Hint: They are often found in DC.
Iraq really did have WMDs, just not the ones advertised by the Bush administration. Those WMDs were its oil reserves and the very real possibility of causing a big drop in oil prices if Saddam became able to market that oil. The only way to prevent the collapse of oil prices would be for Big Oil to control the production and marketing of that oil.
What was Cheney and Big Oil talking about before the Iraq invasion? The Supreme Court said they didn't have to tell us.
Every US president since Nixon has realized that gasoline prices are anti-correlated with approval rating and falling gasoline prices are the best stimulus you can come up with....
Again you fail to make sense...
It's more important for Big Oil (and a few presidential insider sheikdoms) to get filthy fucking rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams than it is to get a good approval rating via low gasoline prices.
Both the democrat and republican parties have significant Big Oil ownership. I suggest Big Oil has a larger influence than the American people in those parties (whose vote can be purchased with enough television advertising dollars).
Stimulus, if desired, can be bought with low interest rates paid for by America's savers. It's not necessary to restrict the oilmen's profits and bonuses.
cleaning up the 1 million plus frac wells will be a another boom for lawyers.
and contractors with good government connections.
Now there's something you don't see everyday - a left-handed Muslim.
What was the question?
Oh hey, did you get your Ramadan dates yet? Tick-tock.
re: left-handed Muslim
Maybe he considers operating a mouse just as unclean as wiping...
"Hey, come in, Achmed."
"Thanks you, LC. I...wondered if you had some hootch."
"I keep some for guests."
"Is the door locked?"
"Yep. (pours drink. Achmed does a shot, is happy).
"Say, Achmed, something smells shitty in here"
"That is why I am using my right hand."
"Come back anytime. Just bring some Ozium."
Well, there does seem to be a lot of chart pr0n on the screen...
EDIT: Could be he already lost his right-hand for a dress code infraction.
[Like maybe showing up for work in a burqa on April 1st and the humorless thugs with the religious police couldn't find April Fools Day in their pocket Sharia guide...just a wag mind you]
EDIT deux: Or some one-eyed cravat-on-the-head somebody somewhere in a cave or Section 8 housing with a Wal-Mart HP laptop declared a fatwa on Windows...who could blame him really
And fracking is clearly safe. Any big oil Cheneyburton insider will give you their unbiased assessment: yep, pumping millions of gallons of water laced with highly toxic/carcinogenic chemicals into the ground is actually good for you. It's encased with cement so it MUST be foolproof.
No problemo. It's a long way from the Hamptons.
Wood Buffalo/Athabasca has an estimated 173 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
You mean kinda like the same way Monterey used to have 13.7 billion barrels?
What do you expect when the SEC is allowed to define an allowable RLI?
Shush, you will run off investors.
exactly
Wood Buffalo/Athabasca has an estimated 173 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
Recoverable? No.
Recoverable yes, the actual resource estimate is 1.7 trillion to 2.5 trillion bbls in place.
Only the most simpleminded of people (tending to either be from Alberta or financial ties to the projects) believe that 170B propaganda you have quoted.
Reminds me of people talking about asteroid mining..
you're wrong, get over it
Below on the thread you say 5mbpd in 2030.. (170b / 5mpd) / dyr =??
In 2100 they'll still be pumpin' that tar sands lol, every simpletons fantasy!
Oil sands production has been climbing for 45 years in a row.
"Recoverable yes"
Sure, at about $300 per barrel. Actually all 1.7 Trillion is recoverable, if the price is right, $10K per barrel, $1M per barrel, etc.
Production constraints on the oil sands are real. That oil is there. That oil can be produced. But scaling it will never be trivial.
I'd guess, and it's just a guess, they will never get more than 4-5 million bpd out.
My guess would be not more 3.5 million bpd, Hollywood will put their foot down there.
there's no need to guess, since it's already published widely that expected output by 2030 will be 5 mbpd
The writting is on the Wall. Investment in oil sands projects is coming to an end:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-28/total-to-take-1-65-billion-loss...
Mar 28, 2013
Total SA (FP), Europe’s third-biggest oil company, will book a $1.65 billion loss in the first quarter on the canceled Voyageur Upgrader project in Canada’s oil sands after selling its stake to Suncor
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/03/27/suncor-scraps-voyageur-oil-...
March 27, 2013
CALGARY — Suncor Energy Inc. is not proceeding with an $11.6-billion upgrading plant to convert raw bitumen into refinery-ready synthetic crude oil.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/joslyn/article18914681...
May. 29 2014
The Joslyn oil sands mine has been shelved indefinitely, a result of rising industry costs that made the $11-billion project financially untenable.
$200 or even $300 barrels would be really helpful, if only society was working toward adapting to that eventuality.
The main cause of the reduced activity in the Alberta oil sands is crude oil transportation .....the moving of oil to market, it is very limited, probably for the next 10 years until the pipeline problems are solved
And at what cost to the environment nutjob?
Matthew R. Simmons, is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Simmons & Company International, a Houston based firm that is one of the world’s largest investment bankers for the energy industry. In his whitepaper entitled “Another Nail in the Coffin of the Case Against Peak Oil” dated November 16, 2007, Simmons writes the following: “The world now has a front-row seat for the stark realization of Peak Oil, due to the transparency of USA’s oil output, the individual field-by-field production of the North Sea fields and PEMEX’s highly commendable data transparency. Why the world is now so complacent and simply trusts too many other key oil producers, including all the OPEC member countries, and permits all of our publicly-held oil companies to hide their key field production data makes as much sense as if we decided to abolish the global air-traffic control system and let pilots rely on hand signals. It would be a wondrous blessing if the world’s oil optimists turned out to be right. It would also be a blessing if everyone panicked about Peak Oil and created a Plan B, only to find out we had 10 to 20 more years before this plan to save the globe had to be put into action. What makes no sense is to ignore the growing amount of hard data that increasingly affirms that crude oil has peaked. In this context, it is important for people of realize that oil prices are not high. In real economic terms, oil prices have been far too low for far too long -- $100 a barrel oil is the equivalent of only 15 cents a cup. Other than municipal water, nothing of any genuine value in the world is sold as cheaply as refineries purchase crude oil.
http://www.redlandsfortnightly.org/papers/schuiling08.htm
You forgot to mention that Matt died rather suddenly, some say mysteriously:
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-08-19/remembering-remarkable-matt...
Poor Matt. May he rest in peace. He talked way too much about the Gulf spill on MSNBC.
Last interview, there, he was embarassingly incoherent, as though drugged... poisoned? I felt very suspicious, too.
What the hell happened to cantarell, used to be # 3 !!! These things don't go dry, do they ???
"What the hell happened to cantarell, used to be # 3 !!! These things don't go dry, do they ???"
It did not go dry. Production only declined by 80%.
Yup: http://petroglobalnews.com/2014/04/cantarell-field-output-plunges-80-hit...
Looks like Ku-Maloob-Zaap (which sounds like something a cartoon superhero would shout) is the only thing keeping Mexico's head above water in terms of oil production.
Most wells never go dry. They become unproductive due to the extraction costs exceeding the return on that investment.
E.R.O.E.I. Energy Returned On Energy Invested. At 80% decline.....it's pretty much worthless unless the price of oil is high enough to continue. But of course.....if the price of oil were that high it would soon destroy any economy based on cheap energy.....which is most on this planet.
"BP and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) are working together to develop the giant field along with Iraq’s state-owned South Oil Company."
And Americans don't even get a thank you for liberating all of that Iraqi oil for BP and China.
China continued to buy our UST paper for awhile.
Bastiat is right. The deal is China gets petroleum easily and does not squawk about USTs. Au is part of the scheme, too, IMO.
Of course, fucking their Russian buddies might negate that deal, but no US President would be so stupid as to fuck over China's buddies, would they?
Iraq has two of them? Now, that does explain the Iraq war very clearly. The weapons of mass destruction and the clear and present threat to America really amounted to two of the world's great oil fields not under direct US control. Now these fields are manipulated by the western corporate world, backed by all the armies of NATO.
Libya is another prime example of a fake threat, hiding behind that threat was the need to put their oil fields under direct western corporate control. Also to destroy any flicker of independent African statehood. Libya is now nothing but a "Mad Max" anarchy in which the western powers can control the oil fields and flow of oil. Anyone Libya force to threaten this western ownership of the oil, will find itself destroyed by paid death squads trained and paid by NATO.
Just as NATO has begun death squad training and funding in Ukraine.
It concerns me that .guv may have already sent SF A teams there.
Of course, we will never know.
Ignoring the Athabasca oil sands in Alberta renders this list pointless.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_oil_sands
Anything posted here from oilprice.com is generally pointless.
To be fair, the headline says "most important" not largest. The arabian oil fields cited here are exponentially easier fields to develop.
Canadian Tar Sands are already reaching a point of no return when it comes to the money needed to keep existing operations much less start new ones.
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/11/a-slowdown-at-the-tar-sands.html
Tar Sands along with Shale oil are the last ditch attempts to keep the Global Debt Ponzi going along with the fake Utopia built up by the Elites and which fueled the rise of the Middle Class.....something we are seeing crumble before our very eyes in real time along with the increased input costs of high energy prices.
Shell gets it......
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/09/25/shell-pulls-out-of-oil-shale-project-...
Middle East oil is the most expensive in the world. Iraq war $1 million million ($1 trillion) divided by 5 million barrels a day for 365 days for 10 years is a $55 per barrel subsidy.
Do any of the Mid East oil producers, excluding Iran, pay for their security- the U.S. military ?
Um. No. The Athabasca oil sands have about 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil (a bit over 5 years world supply) at current prices. Oil prices will, of course, go up, increasing the pay zones, but here's the thing. Any oil we get has have a low enough prices, and a high enough energy return to support not just the cost of extraction, but to support industrial activity as well. Cheap, high net energy Saudi oil does that nicely. Athabasca? Less so. As with all the lower grade oils, diminishing energy returns and high prices stops you well before you run out of hydrocarbons.
Yup. Unconventional oil sands in Alberta could be 2 trillion barrels of recoverable reserves Shell ceo estimated... or enough on its own to supply north America for 50 years. Well to wheel oil sands extraction contributes about 25% of the carbon emission but are down 26% since early days. Programs like plans to use mini nukes to heat the stream could further drop emissions dramatically.
Again totally fucking the environment and ecosystems not to mention all the increased rates of cancer.
Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom had NOTHING to do with freedom.
Operation Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L.) at least signaled the TRUE intentions of the NWO.
AC not PC
Who needs oil?
Theyll be an unlimited supply of Millennials willing to rickshaw you around just for letting them connect to your LTE hotspot.
They'll make an app for that. GiddyAPP ! Available now on Google Play, iTunes and Amazon.
"From camel traders to oil traders back to camel traders in a generation."
So, outside of Ghawar, we're looking at about 162 billion barrels. At 30 billion barrels a year (current world consumption), that's about 5.4 years of supply. If Ghawar has that much, we're looking at 10 years or so of supply.
These figures are approximate, of course. Ghawar may have more, or less than that. Enhanced extraction techniques may add a year or two, albeit at a significantly higher cost and lower net energy return. And of course, this isn't the whole world's oil supply, just the supply of the best and the cheapest oil.
Which allowing for damage to well heads, in the cause of conqust, explains the panic to
dismember Russia/Ukraine.
that's great - my guess is that massive amounts of energy (oil, gas, natgas, heating, diesel) produced is being stored carefully so as not to tank CME's price
eventually this will surface and we get $30 per bbl oil again
Whaaa...?
Why will anybody sell oil in old *USD* in ten or fifteen years? It may well go to that level when measured in historic, pre-Zimbabwe USD - except those won't exist anywhere besides Wikipedia. It will take the equivalent of a few hundred 'new' PO$ dollars to buy a barrel of oil in whatever currency it actually trades. Not to worry though. All those 401K 'old' dollars will have been converted by the government into the new PO$.
Athabasca, Niobrara, Eagle Ford, Bakken, Lula/Santos, Gulf of Mexico - mankind gets cheap petroleum and the flora and fauna see their habitat decimated. Biodiversity is of little importance after all. Why do we need so many different species of animals anyway? What good is a boreal forest or a peat bog? Everyone knows man is at the top of the food chain. What good is the rest, right? Let's just drill ourselves into extinction but fuck it, we'll have cheap oil.....
Why did the Washington D.C. globalists go into Iraq? And, I can see the Klingons but where is Spock?
Syriana
http://peakoilbarrel.com/closer-look-saudi-arabia/
I still say we are ignoring the elephant in the room. The real crisis is not peak oil, but a suppression of science. Two separate sources have said that there are over 4000 energy-related patents that have been declared classifies by the US gov. for reasons of "National Security" ( ie: government insecurity).
http://youtu.be/Aa6baEOEcTk
And with a little research it easy to see how many people who once claim to have discovered or invented a better energy sysem now live quietly in a mansion and drive gasoline cars, or else they seem to die early. Medical research seems to have gone the same way; there is much more money and control available if they only treat the syptoms of a disiease.
http://youtu.be/HrJ1B46q7PE
Like the main-sream media, main-stream science has failed to deliver what was promised.
Yes, that is my opinion too. Why should it be so difficult to make real effective use of the solar energy, for example.
Or look at this: Suddenly all this was rubbish.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-the-miracle-cure--sc...
It had to be rubbish since it would have killed whole industries.
Just now I found the time to look the videos. Great stuff. Thanks a lot !!!!
Especially the second movie about the FDA and alternative cancer therapy. I was working in the biotechnical research field with a small company not as a researcher but as a finance guy. We know very well , that the whole big pharma business is nearly 100% fraud and corruption. To get a foot on the ground in these markets is impossible when big pharma is opposing it. Big Pharma is more like one entity. The know each other very well since centuries and do cooperate on many fields and levels.
If Iraq has this much oil, why is their curency the Dinar nearly worthless? The Dinar might just be a major currency play if their government ever gets their act together.
Or, if the US has so many brilliant economists, why has the dollar lost 97% or so of its purchasing power in the last 100 years?
It used to be "common knowledge" that growth in major commodities comes from the largest deposits. 40% of sustainable daily global crude oil production comes from a few dozen fields. Prior to, "drill, baby, drill" it use to be common knowledge that drilling a lot of small fields can't produce growth in daily sustainable production.
I wonder why, all of a sudden, when the couple of dozen fields that have accounted for growth in daily sustainable numbers for the past 50 years go into terminal decline, the "common knowledge" changes. Could it be that we have a debt based economic model that requires that the past 150 years of persistent growth be extrapolated indefinitely into the future?
When it comes to debt, if you aren't growing you are dying.
"...preventing oil prices from spiking in an age of high demand and geopolitical turmoil..."
horsecrap! the banksters at goldman sachs, jpm, morgan stanley, and others keep the price of oil high through their speculative churn and trade. oil would be half or less without those parasitic scum.
as for the ghawar field - what a joke. it pumps more water than oil and is in severe decline. saudi arabia is no more a swing producer than the black keys.
the banksters at goldman sachs, jpm, morgan stanley, and others keep the price of oil and gold low through their speculative churn and trade. oil would be half again as much or more without their manipulations to support the status quo of infinite resources.
Ghawar is close to the end. Water cut is over 50% now (Saudi Aramco is moving 14 million bpd of seawater a day to produce 10.6 mbd of oil, or over a barrel of seawater for every barrel of oil produced) and rising.
A major (10billion USD) expansion project at Khurais back in 2009-2010 that increased the capacity of the Qurayyah seawater injection system by 4.5 million bpd of treated water for injection at the Khurais and South Ghawar fields resulted in a 1.2m bpd oil output increase, which is 3.75 barrels of water for every 1 barrel of oil returned (a 79% water cut, or 21% actual oil).
http://www.hydrocarbons-technology.com/projects/khurais/
That is not an accomplishment I would be proud of. Extrapolate that performance across most of the Saudi fields and you can see the depletion rates are rising rapidly now.