Authors libby rittenberg 724

much smaller, but it is going to be far more difficult to exploit. Khurais has
no pressure of its own. To extract any oil from it, the Saudis will have to
pump a massive amount of seawater from the Persian Gulf, which is 120
miles from Khurais. Injecting the water involves an extraordinary complex
of pipes, filters, and more than 100 injection wells for the seawater. The
whole project will cost a total of $15 billion. The Saudis told The Wall
Street Journal that the development of the Khurais complex is the biggest
industrial project underway in the world. The Saudis have used seismic
technology to take more than 2.8 million 3-dimensional pictures of the
deposit, trying to gain as complete an understanding of what lies beneath
the surface as possible. The massive injection of seawater is risky. Done
incorrectly, the introduction of the seawater could make the oil unusable.
Khurais illustrates a fundamental problem that the world faces as it
contemplates its energy future. The field requires massive investment for
an extraordinarily uncertain outcome, one that will only increase Saudi
capacity from about 11.3 million barrels per day to 12.5.
Sadad al-Husseini, who until 2004 was the second in command at Aramco
and is now a private energy consultant, doubts that Saudi Arabia will be
able to achieve even that increase in output. He says that is true of the
world in general, that the globe has already reached the maximum
production it will ever achieve—the so-called “peak production” theory.
What we face, he told The Wall Street Journal in 2008, is a grim future of
depleting oil resources and rising prices.
Rising oil prices, of course, lead to greater conservation efforts, and the
economic slump that took hold in the latter part of 2008 has led to a sharp
reversal in oil prices. But, if “peak production” theory is valid, lower oil
Attributed to Libby Rittenberg and Timothy Tregarthen
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