http://www.peakoil.ie/newsletters/774

First published June 2006; article no. 711
Saudi Aramco admits that the natural decline of its old fields is now running at 8% a year. Infill drilling can of course help offset the decline but it is a losing battle. Overall it begins to sound as if Saudi Arabia has passed its Peak (see Item 713 below for a re-evaluation of this country).
Saudi Aramco's mature crude oil fields are expected to decline at a gross average rate of 8%/year without additional maintenance and drilling, a Saudi Aramco spokesman said Tuesday.
But Saudi Aramco has taken a number of measures to offset a decline in output from the country's aging oil fields, the spokesman added. "A variety of remedial activities are always being taken in oil fields influencing their effective decline rates," the spokesman said. "The drilling of additional development wells in the producing fields is Saudi Aramco's standard practice to offset normal declines of older wells."
This is particularly important when oil fields are progressively depleted under a well thought out strategy of maximizing the sweep and displacement efficiencies, leading to high ultimate oil recovery, the spokesman said.
"This maintain potential drilling in mature fields combined with a multitude of remedial actions and the development of new fields, with long plateau lives, lowers the composite decline rate of producing fields to around 2%," the spokesman said. Underscoring these efforts, Saudi Aramco signed two contracts with J. Ray McDermott Middle East and McDermott Arabia Company Ltd, subsidiaries of J. Ray McDermott, to detail design, procure, fabricate, transport and install offshore facilities for the Maintain Potential and Khursaniyah Upstream
Pipeline programs, Saudi Aramco said April 6.
The first contract includes two drilling support structures in Zuluf field to be installed in December 2006 and one new wellhead production platform in the Central Safaniya oil field to support onstream start-up in May 2007, Saudi Aramco said. Three additional wellhead platforms will be installed in the Central Safaniya and Zuluf fields by December 2007. New associated flowlines will connect these platforms to existing offshore tie-in (manifold) platforms.
To support increasing production in the Central Safaniya field, a new tie-in platform (Safaniya TP-18) will also be engineered, procured, fabricated and installed by December 2007, along with a 24-inch trunkline between it and a subsea connection on the new 42-inch trunkline flowing to the onshore Safaniya GOSP-1, installed under a separate contract.
The second contract is associated with the subsea portion, some 22 km (14 miles) long, of the 30-inch gas pipeline from Abu Ali Island to an onshore site at Khursaniyah to be installed by May 2007.
This subsea portion is part of the new 66 km BKTG-1 pipeline that will transport 220 million cubic feet/day of gas from Abu Ali Plant to Khursaniyah Gas Plant.
--Glen Carey, glen_carey@platts.com
Submitted by KBuckley on Wed, 2006-06-07 19:25.