Petroleum News Flash

From an interview with Matt Simmons in Petroleum News

“All of these fields are old,” he pointed out, “but Saudi Aramco has managed them in a ‘gold standard’ fashion by instituting careful and rigorous water injection to maintain very high reservoir pressures. They’re effectively sweeping the reservoirs until the easily recoverable oil is gone. In so doing, they have defied the standard decline curves. With water injection, they’ve maintained reservoir pressures above the bubble point. The trouble is, once they finally finish the sweep, they’ve done both primary and secondary depletion. There isn’t any Act 2.”

Ever seen a big dog eat a package of brats or a hunk of cheese? Basically it goes down in one or two gulps, and the dog invariably looks at you expecting more. Well, folks, that's the situation we're in.