Aramco’s Mythical Ghawar Field Could Be Its Weak Spot
Some of the most secretive, highly-anticipated details about the Saudi oil industry have just been released.
Saudi Aramco is preparing to launch a major bond issuance to purchase the Saudi petrochemical company Sabic, a process that required a detailed prospectus on the company. As part of that review, Aramco released on Monday some closely-guarded state secrets that have been kept under wraps for decades and have been the subject of endless and wild speculation.
With little fanfare, Aramco released some details …and they are somewhat damning. For instance, the Ghawar oil field, which has at times held an almost mythical status both because of its massive size and also because of the complete opaqueness on its inner workings, can’t produce as much as previously thought. Ghawar is the core of Aramco’s oil production, and is of vital national security importance to the Saudi state.
The prospectus says that the Ghawar field can only produce 3.8 million barrels per day (mb/d), not the widely thought 5 mb/d that has floated around for years as a rough estimate. “As Saudi’s largest field, a surprisingly low production capacity figure from Ghawar is the stand-out of the report,” said Virendra Chauhan, head of upstream at consultant Energy Aspects Ltd., according to Bloomberg.
There was little other detail offered on that figure, why it declined, or whether it would continue to decline. But it is a very significant downward revision.
Nevertheless, the Aramco prospectus confirmed some more impressive figures that have also been the subject of speculation. The document says the company can produce 12 mb/d, a rate of output that has been criticized and questioned. With current production at about 10 mb/d, that implies a current 2 mb/d of spare capacity, which is a comfortable buffer that could plug some hypothetical supply gaps. In addition, there is about 500,000 bpd lying dormant in the Neutral Zone on the border with Kuwait.
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