Then the illusion slipped. On a whim I asked my hosts about another , older
oilfield called Ghawar. It is the largest field ever discovered, its deep
sandstone reservoir at one time had held perhaps one-seventh of the world's
known oil reserves, and its well produced roughly one of every 12 barrels of
crude consumed on earth. In the iconography of oil, Ghawar is the mythical
giant that makes most other fields look puny and mortal. . . .
"At Ghawar,' he said, 'they have to inject water into the field to force the
oil out,' by contrast, he continued, Shayba's oil contained only trace
amounts of water. At Ghawar, the engineer said, the 'water cut' was 30%."
"The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Ghawar's water injections were
hardly news, but a 30% water cut, if true, was startling. Most new oilfields
produce almost pure oil or oil mixed with natural gas--with little water.
Over time, however, as the oil is drawn out, operators must replace it with
water to keep the oil flowing --until eventually what flows is almost pure
water and the field is no longer worth operating."
"Ghawar will not run dry overnight, but the beginning of the end of its oil
is in sight." Paul Roberts, "New Tyrants for Old as the Oil Starts to Run
Out, " Sunday Times (News Review), May 16, 2004, p. 8