This will likely be of limited interest to most Gazette visitors, but if you’re in the awl bidness like me, you might find this as fascinating as I did. It’s a 22-minute animated video showing the details of a huge oilfield development project in Saudi Arabia (see link below).
And when I say “huge,” I mean “mind-boggingly humongous,” at least in oilfield terms. The project, which treats and transports seawater to several inland fields where it’s injected to increase production from those fields, is touted as not only the largest in Saudi history, but the largest in industry history, period. I don’t know the basis for that claim, but some of the statistics are impressive:
- The program will increase the capacity of the seawater treatment plant by 4.5 million barrels of water per day (or almost 200 million gallons daily)
- As a result of this program, the three oilfields that receive the treated water will produce 1.2 million barrels of oil (plus associated natural gas and natural gas liquids) each day – or more than 5% of the daily average crude consumption in the USA. By way of comparison, the entire state of Texas produces only about a million barrels a day.
For more information about this project and the underlying technology, visit The Oil Drum.