What is a geologic setting for Ghawar?
Geology. Ghawar occupies an anticline above a basement fault block dating to Carboniferous time, about 320 million years ago; Cretaceous tectonic activity, as the northeast margin of Africa began to impinge on southwest Asia, enhanced the structure.
Who discovered Ghawar oil field?
Abstract Aramco
Abstract. Aramco initially discovered oil in Ghawar in 1948, based on surface mapping and shallow structure drilling. Ghawar is a large north-trending anticlinal structure, some 250 kilometers long and 30 kilometers wide.
When was the Ghawar oil field discovered?
1948
And it is apt to begin the series with the world’s largest of its kind – the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia. Discovered in 1948 and located some 200 km east of Riyadh, Ghawar has produced about five million barrels of oil per day in the past three decades.
What is a super giant oil field?
Super-giant oil fields are all fields containing at least 5 billion barrels of known recoverable crude oil. Combination giant oil fields are fields containing at least 250 million barrels of recoverable petroleum liquids and at least 500 million bar- rels of recoverable hydrocarbons in liquids or liquid-equivalents.
Why does Saudi Arabia have so much oil?
The most widely accepted theory for why the Middle East is loaded with oil is that the region was not always a vast desert. The oil was captured in place on the seabed by thick layers of salt. As the land in the modern Middle East region rose due to tectonic activity, the Tethys Ocean receded.
How many wells are there in Ghawar field?
Ghawar had more than 3,000 injector and oil producer wells excluding the gas wells by the end of 2012. Halliburton was awarded five-year oilfield service contract by Saudi Aramco in November 2009 to develop up to 185 oil production, water injection and evaluation wells at the world’s biggest oil field.
How are oil fields discovered?
The locations of oil fields have been the origin of past geopolitical conflicts and environmental concerns. Oil may also be discovered beneath the ocean floor, where deep-sea rigs explore and extract these fields.
What type of rock is the Ghawar oil field?
The Ghawar area is largely covered with Miocene-Pleistocene continental sediments except for two small Eocene outcrops. The Tertiary and Cretaceous rocks have not yielded oil accumulations in this field; the producing reservoir is the Upper Jurassic Arab formation which is a major oil reservoir in the Middle East.
What is the history of the Ghawar Field?
The discovery and development of the Ghawar field dates back to the 1940’s and 50’s, when the Standard Oil of California (Socal, forerunner of Arabian American Oil Company, later Saudi Aramco) obtained concessions from the Saudi government for oil exploration in the kingdom.
What is the depth of the oil column in North Ghawar?
The oil column in the field has been reported to be 396m. The oil-water contact in North Ghawar is about 137m deeper than in South Ghawar; this northward tilting of the oil-water contact has puzzled researchers for decades.
Where is the oil contact at Ghawar?
The oil-water contact at Ghawar dips to the northeast, dipping more than 660 feet (200 m) between the southwest end of Haradh and the Fazran area. The contact is consistently higher on the west flank of the field than on the east, and a tar mat is associated with the original contact.