Saudi oil propaganda monument rises in desert

Saudi Aramco has given journalists the full tour of the propaganda machine also known as an oil production plant.
Propaganda? Yes. The Saudis claim this will let them massively ramp up oil production, while skeptics have particular reasons to be, well, skeptical.

Skeptics who doubt Saudi Arabia’s ability to meet growing world oil consumption point to Khurais as a project that shows the kingdom is reaching its limits.

Khurais will start off with a massive water injection system around the periphery of the giant field and with electronic submersible pumps in the production wells — steps Aramco normally uses after a field has been producing for several years.

Injecting more than 2 million barrels a day of treated seawater into the field will provide a pressure source to move the oil through the rocks a mile below the desert and into the field's production wells.

Amin Nasser, Aramco's senior vice president for production and exploration, said the decision to use submersible pumps was not about coaxing production from a weak field, but rather a function of cost.

Nasser, meanwhile, spouted the Aramco line that there is no oil shortage and critics need to look elsewhere for high oil prices.

But, in a separate column, Jim Landers notes that many Peak Oil theorists are highly skeptical the Khurais project can do what the Saudis claim.

The Saudis say they're spending $60 billion over the next five years to maintain and expand production capacity – first to 12.5 million barrels a day by the end of 2009 and then to 15 million barrels a day if the demand is there.

County me as among the many skeptics.

Ghawar has a 28 percent water cut, and Nasser claims that is decreasing? Puhleeze.

Also, some oil analysts think the KSA 200K barrel increase in oil production will actually make oil prices worse in the short term, because it cuts into Saudi spare capacity, thereby reducing a major market buffer.