Oil industry of Saudi Arabia

The oil industry of the Saudi Arabia is resulting from explorations of the Années 1930, which made it possible to discover the largest layers of Pétrole of the world. Saudi Arabia is currently the first world oil producer, and holds largest world reserves (although their exact sum is subject to deposit, to see oil Pic).

History of discovered - Succession of operating companies

Until in the Years 1930, under motionless sands of the Arabic east , rested, unsuspected, greatest world reserves of this gold which one says black. Admittedly the king Abd Al-Aziz had granted without too much accepting a concession in it authorizing a British holding the search for oil to explore the desert, but this one not having made use of this right had lost its concession. In 1933, the king allotted to SOCAL (Standard Oil off California) the exclusive rights of prospection and of exploitation of oil in the area Is of Arabia, as well as special rights in other areas of the kingdom, it for one 60 years duration, which were changed to 66 thereafter. A new entity, California Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC), held to 50% by Socal (which became Chevron thereafter) and (starting from 1937) to 50% by Texas Company, became owner of the concession in 1934. In 1944, Casoc was famous Arabian American Oil Company, universally known under its acronym of Aramco. In 1948, the Standard Oil Company off New Jersey (which took thereafter the name of Esso then that of Exxon) and Socony-Vacuum Oil Company (the ancestor of Mobil) joined the capital of Aramco. The four companies all, American, remained until in 1973 the mainstays of the oil development in Saudi Arabia.

The search for new layers, which continues still 55 years after the first discovered ones, revealed soon that the Province of the East concealed the largest fields of Hydrocarbure S of the world. The first segment of Ghawar, the vastest layer of the world, was discovered in 1948; Safaniya, the largest offshore oil rig layer, in 1951. In 1991, 60 exploitable layers had been updated, including 5 for the only year 1990. In 1989 and 1990, a total of 7 new layers, a light crude but of higher quality, were discovered in the south of Riyadh, in the middle of an area located apart from the supposed hydrocarbon reserves.

Exploitation

Drilling began in April 1935 in the area from Dammam Dome, along the coast of the Persian Gulf, but the first well started to return only in March 1938. The first barrel embarked in May 1939 with Ras Tanura which became thereafter one of the largest exporting oil terminals. In 1991 more than 60 billion Baril S had been produced since 1938 only by Aramco, but the known reserves are of 257,5 billion barrels and likely to increase more as the layers of the South of Nadj are circumscribed. Gas reserves non-aligned naturalness exceeded in 1991 the 6,4 billion cubic meters. The programs of expansion in progress envisaged an increase in the production to 10 million barrels per day.

In 1973, Saudi Arabia assumed 25% of the rights and the properties of Aramco. This reappropriation of the national heritage led the government to the takeover of Aramco of which it acquired 60% in 1974, then 100% in 1980. Officially famous Saudi Arabian Oil Company or Saoudi Aramco in 1988, Aramco continues to make tremble industry and to upset the rooms of exchange of the whole world while using of sound Acronyme old 50 years. Aramco fulfills today the functions of operator for the production of the country, and plays the part of intermediary in a certain number of projects of BTP or Ingénierie. The company officiated besides for this reason as of 1949 by supervising the construction of the Dammam-Riyadh railway line whose government was project superintendent, or more recently by controlling the unfolding of Master Gas Plan. The power of Aramco also appeared by the control of operations downstream from the extraction, for example the establishment in 1988 of a Joint-venture with Texaco intended to refine, distribute and market derivative products of oil in the East and the area of the Gulf of the the United States.

Although Aramco controls 95% of the production of Saudi Arabia, two other companies operate in the Saudi half of the Divided Zone, the old neutral zone between the Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Getty Oil Company, with American capital, holds the concession for the terrestrial zone whereas Arabian Oil Company (AOC), of nationality Japan ease, exploits the offshore oil rig concession. This band of territory, subject of a litigation between the two countries, was shared by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1965, then divided into two quasi-equal parts in 1970. The two countries were also appropriate to share oil reserves of the zone equitably and to divide the incomes of oil. The reserves known for all the zone added up in 1991 5 billion barrels, and the production was on average of 359.000 barrels per day between 1985 and 1989, the Saudi share of this production constituting between 2 and 4 pourcents of the total production of Saudi Arabia.

Only operator for the province of the East, Aramco forever need to drill and exploit only the optimum number of wells; after a half century, several of these wells require an artificial repressurization by a system of not-drinkable brackish spring water injection are drained and injected into the tanks as the crude is extracted from it. Only 850 wells are used to cover a production going up to 9 million barrels per day, which represents an average of: 10588 barrels per day each one.

Installations of transport and treatment

Handling, the transport and the treatment of the oil matters require a complex network of installations distributed in all Is Arabic and connected between them by more than 21.000 km of Oléoduc S. Each of the 60 factories of separation gas-oil (Fuel oil separator seedlings or GOSPs) serves several wells in a considerable operating range, via a dense mesh of pipelines of junction, and sets ablaze the naked sky of its incandescent gas chimneys. The stabilizing complexes of Abqaiq and Juaymah soften flows of crude acid while elsewhere the treatment plants of natural gases produce Propane, Butane and gas for domestic use (Méthane). With Ras Tanura, a refinery giant of a capacity of 530.000 barrels per day, open in 1941 and increased constantly since, treats part of the crude before its forwarding. Here factories specialized in the derivative products of oil operate - as in the new city of Jubayl - whereas there, along the coasts, from Short-nap cloth Tanura in Juaymah while passing by Yanbu, extend from vast terminals of export.

Large refineries were also built in Jubayl (280 000 barrels per day), in Yanbu (250 000 barrels per day for export and 170.000 barrels per day reserved for domestic consumption). The refineries of Riyadh (134 000 barrels per day), of Jiddah (95 000 barrels per day), Rabigh (332 000 barrels per day) and of Khafji (30 000 barrels per day) change to 8 the full number of refineries to Saudi Arabia with a full capacity of 1,82 barrels million per day.

The long pipeline Transarabique (Tapline) open in 1951, requiring constant repairs, lost any profitability lasting the Années 1970 and became little by little not exploitable; it was definitively closed in 1990. Nevertheless, Saoudites never gave up the idea of an exit at the West, this time not for normal exports, but at strategic ends, the strait of Ormuz divided between Oman and the Iran being a dangerous crossing point in the event of conflict between Gulf States and navigation in the Gulf presenting of real dangers since the Guerre Iran-Iraq. These strategic considerations led during the Années 1980 to construction, at the price of several billion dollars of investment, of three vast pipelines uniting the port of Yanbu to the oil-bearing fields of the East: the pipeline of liquefied natural gases (NGL), and 66 to 76 cm in diameter, connecting 1170 km length Is in the West, was brought into service in March 1981 and transports today 270000 barrels per day (oil equivalent); as for the crude pipeline of a diameter of 122 cm open in June 1981, as well as the side track 142 cm in diameter which was associated to him in 1987, they extend both out of 1200 km length. The addition of hydraulic pumps and the expansion of storage capacities at each end of this transport system of the crude confer to him today a capacity of about 5 million barrels per day - ten times the flow of Tapline and a capacity for absorption of half of the production of Aramco.

These daring systems of routing which cross the peninsula, new Trans-Siberian with energy, equip Saudi Arabia with a road domesticates completely sour, which mainly free it from the threats of blockade. Saoudites remain nevertheless prone to a prohibition of their exports since Yanbu if the two straits (Suez Canal and Chatt-el-Arab) of the Red Sea theirs are prohibited.

Gas

At the end of the Years 1970, Saudi Arabia implemented the ambitious plan of control of gas or Master Gas System. The gas formerly burned during the separation of hydrocarbons according to their density is partly used today with the production of electricity, with the desalinisation of water, the manufacture of Verre, Ciment S, Engrais or Chaux. The gas is also conveyed by conduits to the new industrial cities of Jubayl and Yanbu to be used to with it as fuel with the refineries, the petrochemical factories, the factories of manure or the blast furnaces, or to be exported there towards the ports of Europe, America or Asia. Conceived to treat 99 million cubic meters of gas per day, Master Gas System makes it possible to bring the equivalent of 750.000 crude barrels per day to a assoiffé world of energy.

International organizations

Saudi Arabia was one of the founding members of OPEC and OAPEC, and played a leading role in OPEC since its whole beginnings. Since the production of Saudi Arabia represents each day a more significant part of the worldwide production of oil, the country had to play a directing and regulating part in the fixing of the oil price while making fluctuate its production.

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