Saudi Arabian oil reserves: two views and reform in Saudi Arabia

Oil Prices and Saudi Arabia:

Interview with Matthew Simmons (extracts)

Full text on http://www.globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=837&cid=1&sid=45

Sean-Paul Kelley - 6/7/2005 Matthew R. Simmons founded Simmons & Company in 1974. The company's focus is on oil services, mergers and acquisitions, as well as bankruptcy workouts. In 1995, the company began providing "total energy services" to the industry. It has offices in Texas, Louisiana and Scotland, with 126 employees, including 76 professionals.

SPK: There has been a lot of talk about Saudi Arabia's spare capacity, just how much do they have. Do you believe they have spare capacity and if so, what do you think it is?
MRS: If they have any spare capacity left it would have to be in Safaniya, which is the big offshore field. That's 28 gravity oil which is heavy oil, and there really isn't any spare refinery capacity left in the world for heavy oil. And if Safaniya actually could crank up by 1.5 mbds and at peak Safaniya could produce 1.2mbd, maybe 1.5mbd 20 years ago, so the whole definition, if you define spare capacity by the amount of readily available oil that is useable then I think the answer is categorically no, they have no spare capacity.
SPK: The criticism that you just laid out I have heard that from a friend who runs a hedge fund. Nice to hear it seconded.
MRS: They toss around with great frequency that they have 11mbd of capacity, that they are producing at some number, but I think it is highly questionable that they are producing 9.5mbd a day.
SPK: Now that I have not heard before.
MRS: I'll tell you why I say that. SPK: Ok. MRS: It's a world of sketchy data, there are only a few pieces of reliable data, really very solid data, and on the Oil Monthly Supply Report from the International Energy Agency almost all that data is just an estimate. The best table of data is the table 6 that shows the OECD Member countries, their crude oil by country of origin, and if you trace the amount of oil that has come in from Saudi Arabia and add it up, well, it doesn't add up.

SPK: I want to get into the specifics of your book and some questions about Saudi Arabia. My first question is about Ghawar, the super giant field in Saudia Arabia. What is its decline rate in real terms?
MRS: No one really knows but I will say this: its production is so totally different from normal fields and Ghawar is a prime example of this is that the reason normal fields start in decline is that the reservoir pressure finally drops to a level that the gas starts to bubble to the top of the field and the water starts intermingling at the bottom and the water and the gas crowd the oil out of the well bore. In very simple terms that's what declines are all about. In the early 60s as the Saudis, Saudi Aramco that is, started becoming very, very nervous about the rapid drop in reservoir pressure in these keys fields, and there are only three of them basically really being produced, they first experimented with gas injection to see if that would maintain higher reservoir pressure and that didn't work. So they then went to a novel approach, it's not novel any more as it's become sort of routine, of water injection as you produce oil producing at least a barrel of water and then a barrel and a half and then two barrels of water until now it's almost three barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced and what you are doing, is that you are basically doing that to continually drive the water column up towards the top of the reservoir to keep the reservoir artificially high. Incidentally you're squeezing the oil from the flanks to the center. And so all during this period of time you have at the surface the appearance of, "oh there's no decline rate." What you are doing is primary and secondary recovery at the same time. And there is a lot of evidence if you read through these technical papers that within the most prolific part of Ghawar which was Northeast Uthmaniyah that in 1979 when they were reaching peak production rates Ghawar was doing about 5.8 million barrels of oil a day, Uthmaniyah was producing three of the 5.8mbd. My guess is that North Uthmaniyah is now almost gone.
SPK: You talk about the watering and what not but it is kind of an aside, do you anticipate something like the rapid decline in production at the Yibal field in Oman happening in Saudi Arabia?
MRS: Yup. That's the reason I've basically used the Yibal field as a case study. It's one of the most sensitive areas where I have gotten the most knee-jerk response. I've been told numerous times by Senior Petroleum Ministry and Aramco people, "Matt the Yibal field is nothing like our carbonate reservoirs." And I said, " I know its not, it's exactly like the reservoir you would have in China." I'm not using it for the reservoir, I'm using it because it was the first giant field in the Middle East to import the technical tools that you think are destructive technologies and will allow you to produce for another 50 years and so do the technical best people at Shell. The best technical people at Shell were so enamored with the use of these technical tools that they convinced the Oman government with a field of 250,000 barrels to ramp it up another 30% for ten years. That was in 1997. Just as they were starting the field went into collapse and by 2003 was producing 30,000-40,000 barrels a day. That's the scary thing in my opinion. It's not the proven reserve controversy. That is a different issue. But the scary thing is that we should basically presume and then be surprised if they ever opened up the data I believe that all five of these great fields that are still close to 90% of production are headed towards collapse.
SPK: How well do you think Saudi Arabia could fake a massive decline rate? How long do you think they could keep something like that under wraps?
MRS: Until the production collapsed. What's ironic is that three years ago today I had no earthly idea I was going to write a book. But I read 15 to 20 technical papers as of this time two years ago and I said to myself, "Gosh, this is troubling." They are encountering a lot more problems than I ever would have imagined. I don't think there is any reason in the world to think that anybody would be any more concerned about Saudi Arabia than the gasps I got two years ago when I started saying, "you know what, I'm actually starting to think Saudi Arabia is an illusion." I can't tell you the gasps I got from people, "you know Matt, I know you kind of picked the gas problems, natural gas here in the US, but you're going over the top. Saudi Arabia? Gimme a break!"
SPK: People these days don't like a Canary in the coalmine!
MRS: Well, you know it's amazing how the human mind works. Here's an example: somebody basically said the USSR is the only super-power that is as big as the US and by the hundredth repetition every single person in the world believes it and then the wall comes down. And people say, "oh my gosh, it's a third world country." This is the same sort of a deal.
SPK: Do you think that Saudi Arabia can drill their way out of the current decline rate? Exploration?
MRS: Nope. Part of the issue is, I want to go back to the Ghawar field. The top 20% of Ghawar which is referred to as North Ghawar is basically where this very, very high permeability within the Arab B Zone 2B resides. Within the Arab B Zone 2B there is unbelievable permeability. When you get outside North Ghawar you have the bottom 80% of the field that will basically produce 300,000 barrels a day for 30 years. That's the bottom 47 miles of Ghawar. And the top 30 miles were basically 4.5 million barrels a day. If you could take the rig counts in Saudi Arabia from 45 to 50 up to 2,000 over a decade they could basically sustain their current production. What you have to do is take every rig in the world to Saudi Arabia. They are going to have one hell of a time going to 100 rigs by the end of 2006, which is their announced plan.
SPK: How large are the Saudi tank farms in country and internationally, like the ones in the Caribbean?
MRS: Somewhere between 50 and 70 million barrels of domestic tank farms and they have about 10-15 million barrels of Atlantic basin tanks farms that is broken out between some storage they rent in Rotterdam but the majority is in the Caribbean. The only times there is clear evidence of a Saudi surge was during the Iraq war where it jumped by about 800,000 barrels a day for about 45 days. I bet you they were just emptying the tanks farms. S
PK: Do you think there is any truth that the wells in the Neutral Zone are long horizontal wells and is it possible to run a multi-model horizontal leg into Iraq and tap it that way.
MRS: No, they can't reach that far. Not that I know of. And the Neutral Zone fields are so crappy. Why bother. Bear in mind that that is the northern extension of the Safiniyah field.


Top Saudi Says Kingdom Has Plenty of Oil

By ANNE GEARAN AP Diplomatic Writer

Guardian June 9, 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) - Saudi Arabia has plenty of oil - more than the world is likely to need - along with an increasing ability to refine crude oil into gasoline and other products before selling it overseas, a top Saudi official says.
``The world is more likely to run out of uses for oil than Saudi Arabia is going to run out of oil,'' Adel al-Jubeir, top foreign policy adviser for Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah, said Wednesday.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Al-Jubeir said relations between his nation and the Bush administration were strong but ``the environment in which the relationship operates ... still leaves a lot to be desired.''
He denied his country has any nuclear weapons ambitions, despite international concerns about a Saudi request to lower international scrutiny of its lone nuclear reactor.
He said he was ``bullish'' about the Saudi economy, which although based on the country's vast oil reserves has also diversified to include a galloping stock market.
Al-Jubeir dismissed speculation, including in a recent book, that the country was hiding the true picture of its oil reserves and that it may have far less than publicly assumed. He said Saudi Arabia has proven reserves of 261 billion barrels, and with the arrival of newer technology could extract an additional 100 billion to 200 billion barrels.
``We will be producing oil for a very long time,'' al-Jubeir said.
Saudi Arabia now pumps 9.5 million barrels of oil daily, with the capacity to produce 11 million barrels a day. The country has pledged to increase daily production to 12.5 million barrels by 2009, and the nation's oil minister said last month the level of 12.5 million to 15 million barrels daily could be sustained for up to 50 years.
High oil prices benefit the Saudi economy in the short run, but al-Jubeir said his nation wants a stable price that won't hurt consumers so much that they reduce their energy demands.
The problem for both the Saudis and the United States is what happens after the oil is pumped.
``If we send more oil to the United States and you can't refine it, it's not going to become gasoline,'' al-Jubeir said. The United States has not built a refinery since the 1970s, and other markets have similarly outmoded or limited refining capacity. Environmental concerns and local opposition make it unlikely new U.S. refineries can be built quickly, even with the current gas price crunch.
Saudi Arabia has partly stepped into the breach, with new refineries being built inside the kingdom as well as in China and soon in India, al-Jubeir said.
The country has also invested in gasoline stations, part of a strategy of ``going downstream'' from oil production to distribution, al-Jubeir said.
``We continue to do it, and we have one of the largest refining and distribution systems in the world,'' he said.
Ordinary Saudis remain deeply distrustful of the United States in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and revelations about mistreatment of Muslim prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and a range of complaints about conditions at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, al-Jubeir said.
``Why do they hate you? They don't hate you, they just don't like your policies.''
Al-Jubeir said the Saudi regime takes no umbrage at U.S. efforts to spread democracy in the Middle East. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have made democratic expansion a centerpiece of Bush's second term foreign policy.
``We believe that the idea of spreading freedom and democracy is a noble one,'' but change must come on terms each country can accept, al-Jubeir said.


Reformers in Saudi Arabia: Seeking Rights, Paying a Price

NEIL MacFARQUHAR

New York Times 9 June 2005

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The Saudi writer Turki al-Hamad wants to shake the younger generation attracted by militant Islam. His new novel, a thinly disguised sketch of four Sept. 11 hijackers, seeks to warn those weighing suicide missions.
"Put your luggage aside and think," reads the opening page to the book, called "The Winds of Paradise" and just released in Arabic.
"I wrote the latest book just to say that the problem is not from outside, the problem is from ourselves - if we don't change ourselves, nothing will change," Mr. Hamad said over coffee in the green marbled lobby of a hotel near Dammam, the city along the Persian Gulf where he lives. His earlier books challenging sexual and political mores remain banned.
After Sept. 11, 2001, the push toward reform in the Middle East gained momentum with the recognition in some quarters that stifling political and economic conditions helped spawn extremism. Reform advocates like Mr. Hamad live under threat but have also gained some space to air grievances.
Hence, Mr. Hamad writes novels to try to jolt young Saudis into re-examining their own society. Fawaziah B. al-Bakr, a woman and a college professor, agitates for women to question their assigned roles. Hassan al-Maleky, a theologian, argues that no one sect - like the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia - holds a monopoly on interpreting Islam.
They are the first to say that meaningful change remains a distant prospect because the institutions opposing such change are so powerful. And because there is no real forum to even discuss change, the process of creating open, freer societies is more the sum of individuals chipping away at the traditional order, rather than any organized movement or national discussion.
The three barely know each other, and their lack of contact is emblematic of Saudi Arabia, which ranks among the most closed Arab countries.
Here and elsewhere, Arab reformers tend to be isolated dissidents, sometimes labeled heretics, much like those persecuted under Soviet totalitarianism.
Even those who pursue the mildest forms of protest are slapped with long prison sentences. The right to assemble does not exist, political parties are banned along with nongovernment organizations, and the ruling princes constantly tell editors what they can print. Local television is almost all clerics, all the time.
The many Islamic theological institutions that maintain the rule of the Saud princes determine the parameters of any public debate.
They evaluate everything through the prism of the Wahhabi teachings unique to Saudi Arabia, vehemently rejecting any alternative.
For many reformists, the lack of free speech grates most; obtaining it is a far higher priority than elections or other formal ingredients of Western democracy.
"Sometimes I don't want elections here, I want public freedoms and public rights," says Mr. Hamad, echoing a statement heard from reformers across the kingdom and indeed across the Arab world. "Give me those things and everything else will come automatically."
But that must be endorsed by the ruling Saud tribe. The eruption of terrorist bombings in downtown Riyadh and elsewhere starting in May 2003 forced them to recognize that Islamic extremism was not some foreign problem.
It is far from clear, however, just how committed the growing number of princes are to altering a system that, ever since the founding monarch put the clan's name on the kingdom in 1932, has given them total control over the world's richest oil resources.
"The will is there but there is hesitation because Saudi Arabia's Islam is based on a certain kind of Islam," Mr. Hamad says. "If you meddle with that culture, you are meddling with the legitimacy of the system. It is a problem that needs to be solved, and it can't be solved behind closed doors."
A Lesson About Sin
The resistance to change became abundantly clear to Mrs. Bakr, an associate professor of education at King Saud University in Riyadh, at a workshop she taught for supervisors on new ways to evaluate teacher performance.
When it was over, one of the more enthusiastic participants handed her an envelope. Inside was a fatwa, or religious ruling, from a local cleric admonishing Mrs. Bakr that her plucked eyebrows were a sin.
"Religion has been made so superficial," Mrs. Bakr says, echoing a common frustration among educated Saudis.
The mind-set that reduces every tiny detail of life to whether it conforms to Wahhabi teaching has prevented Saudi Arabia from using its oil wealth to become one of the richest, most developed countries on earth, many Saudi reformers say.
Reformists believe that the problem starts from the earliest years in school, because the Ministry of Education has set its goal as promoting the glory and proud heritage of Islamic civilization, which began here.
But the reality is that elementary school lessons, particularly the 60 percent of classroom time devoted to religion, have zero application in the modern world, Mrs. Bakr says. She reels off a long, random list.
Fourth graders are taught how to clean themselves in the Islamically acceptable manner after relieving themselves in the desert. The telephone is described as a modern innovation.
At a middle school's traffic safety day recently, one talk focused on the risk of being tortured in the grave if you died in a traffic accident while living contrary to God's commandments.
"Why waste time on these trivial things? I don't get it," she said, in her Riyadh home with her husband or teenage son always present, so no one could accuse her of welcoming an unrelated man into her house alone. "Teach the students how to think, give them a scientific project, teach them skills."
She and others like her are lobbying to have all religious lessons consolidated into one subject, Islamic studies, that would afford students more time for other learning.
A few years ago, religious fundamentalists were so influential in the university that she would not have dared raise such questions, Mrs. Bakr notes.
Major limitations on pushing for change still remain. Not least, male professors bar their female colleagues from attending department meetings because Islam dictates that men should hear a woman's voice only when absolutely necessary, lest they become aroused.
Mrs. Bakr says she wanted to rebel against certain Saudi ways of doing things from her earliest years - when men in her neighborhood yelled at her for playing in the streets, or when her teachers hit her with short bamboo prods because her abaya, or cloak, was askew.
As an adolescent, she made a precocious debut as a newspaper columnist while still in high school, railing against the way women lack rights in the kingdom. But any open rebellion is just about impossible, as Mrs. Bakr learned the hard way.
In November 1990, she had just returned with her doctorate from the University of London and was appointed to the faculty at King Saud University. She held the post for all of two days when she joined a group of 47 women protesting the ban on women driving by getting behind the wheel for just 15 minutes. The ensuing outcry from religious fundamentalists pushed her out of a job for 18 months, until King Fahd reinstated the women.
Despite the passage of 15 years, the protest still resonates. She has been denied promotions or the chance to serve on government committees. The enduring price made that demonstration practically the first and last of its kind.
Punishing the Reformers
The Sauds were prepared to allow limited discussion in the press, but have come down hard on those who continue to press publicly for reform. A gathering of about 100 reformists from across the country at a hotel near Riyadh airport in February 2004 provoked their wrath.
Three activists - two academics, Matrouk al-Faleh and Abdullah al-Hamid, and the poet Ali al-Domeini - were arrested after circulating a petition supporting a constitutional monarchy. Their lawyer, Abdulrahman al-Lahem, was also jailed last fall.
In May, the three were given heavy jail terms: Mr. Domeini, nine years; Mr. Hamid, seven years and Mr. Faleh, six years. Mr. Lahem has not been charged.
The case has become a benchmark of the government's attitude toward reform because the three demanded that the laws already on the books guaranteeing a transparent judiciary be respected.
"They did not want to topple the regime and they did not question the legitimacy of the king or his sons or his grandsons," says Fawziah al-Ayouni, the poet's wife, a soft-spoken former teacher. "They did not violate any law; to raise a petition to the ruler is a tradition in Islam."
A key problem is the utter lack of civil rights. Saudis are taught in schools and told in mosques that actions by state institutions like the religious police cannot be questioned because they operate under the mantle of Islam.
In a particularly graphic example, a 31-year-old businesswoman was hauled in by the religious police in February, accused of office adultery and using drugs.
The woman, who asked not to be identified for fear of another arrest, said her father was ill so she went to his office to fill in and open the safe. The business was raided by the religious police, formally known as The Society for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
"Don't you fear God?" she recalls them screaming, demanding that she not address them from behind a desk because women don't belong there. "It is a sin that you are sitting in this office around men." The woman says one of the men groped her while ostensibly searching for drugs before dragging her kicking and screaming into an unmarked Toyota.
She had called her husband, but when he tried to collect her from the station, they pretended she was elsewhere. Instead they locked her into a roach-infested jail for a couple of days and forced her to endure an extended lecture by the prison's religious sheik about the sin of adultery.
"He thought I was weeping because he was so convincing," said the woman, pale and shaking a week after the ordeal. She doubts most princes have any grasp of such hidden problems because no policeman would dare touch a royal.
A Theologian's Penance: Prison
Resistance to change is soaked through the ranks of the country's top religious officials, and even trained sheiks face jail time for suggesting that the way the religion is taught needs reforming.
Hassan al-Maleky is a Saudi theologian who was imprisoned briefly and fired from his government job for repeatedly raising doubts about how Wahhabis interpret Islamic history.
Those whom the West call fundamentalists are referred to in the Muslim world as salafis, an Arabic word referring to the early generations of Muslim leaders who followed the Prophet Muhammad. Salafis believe that Islam reached its purest form at that time and should return to it.
But Mr. Maleky argues that the caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty, which ruled from Damascus from 661 to 750, were garden variety despots who decreed that the public could not question decisions made by rulers in the name of religion.
"The salafis blindly defend the Umayyads despite their many injustices," said Mr. Maleky, a studious figure in a long white robe and white head scarf, sitting in the book-lined living room of his house in a poor Riyadh neighborhood.
"After the Umayyads, Islamic thought left everything to the ruler, absolute obedience was expected in all circumstances, and that is not right," he said.
Mr. Maleky views Saudi Arabia's religious establishment as the spiritual descendants of the repressive Umayyads. An article reflecting his viewpoint got him expelled from Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud University, Riyadh's prestigious center of Islamic higher education, in the early 1990's, he says. His books echoing similar themes are banned, and he is not allowed to travel outside the kingdom.
Mr. Maleky, 38, grew up in a poor family of banana and coffee farmers in mountainous southwestern Saudi Arabia, where he walked four miles to elementary school every day. His parents were illiterate. He was the first in his family to reach university.
When he got there, he found it even more rigid and formulaic than his earlier schooling. Hence Mr. Maleky arrived at roughly the same conclusion as Mrs. Bakr and many other reformers: he had to spend his life agitating for change.
The religious establishment always calls for "dawa" or preaching, he says, but never for research or revision.
"Where are the concerns for public interest and other big issues?" he laments. "These things have no presence. Preaching here is not for knowledge and thought. "
He extracts one book from a 16-volume set that contains most of the important religious fatwas, or rulings, that dictate the rituals of daily life in Saudi Arabia. He reads a few lines each from fatwas that talk about keeping women covered, about how policemen should not wear uniforms because pants ape Western garb and how listening to the noise of gurgling water is sinful.
Once when he was arrested, Mr. Maleky said he found himself in the absurd position of being questioned by security officers about his views toward the second Umayyad caliph. "What does the Interior Ministry have to do with that?" he said.
The consequences of elevating extremist thought to the point where it cannot be questioned are grave, Mr. Maleky believes. "If Wahhabism doesn't revise itself," he says, "it will produce more terrorists."
Change at a Measured Pace
Of course many Saudis, and not just the princes, argue that reform is en route, but must proceed at a measured pace. The mere fact that the word Wahhabi, which was once banned, can now be used in public, means that at least the terms of the debate are becoming more realistic.
Having males nationwide vote for half the members of the municipal councils for the first time this year is an important step, too, they say. Most of those who won, especially in urban areas, had heavily religious backgrounds. Those elected said this showed that Saudis in general favor a go-slow approach to reform.
"We need to absorb and digest this - even the terminology used in the election is new," says Tarek O. al-Kasabi, the chairman of a Riyadh hospital, who won election to one of seven city council seats in the capital in February. He would like an elected parliament, as opposed to the 150-member body now appointed by the royal family, but prefers a smooth transition rather than an abrupt switch.
"I am flexible about the timetable," Mr. Kasabi said. "I don't want to risk the process."
Whether Saudis believe the changes are coming too fast or too slowly, they all agree that everyone is dependent on the ruling Sauds accepting that change is necessary. For that they believe outside criticism is necessary, as long as it does not come across as an attack on Islam.
Western governments, reformers say, should question why curriculums are so weak, why Arab societies contribute virtually nothing to the world's scientific or technological advancements. That sort of criticism echoes questions that some Saudi parents ask.
Among themselves, Saudi reformers sometimes argue that they are too timid about challenging the status quo. Some, like Mr. Hamad, believe changing the Saudi way of thinking is more important than open confrontation.
In 1995, he sought early retirement from King Saud University at the age of 45 because he figured writing novels was a more effective way to get young Saudis to think than his frequent political columns in newspapers. He said he was tired of being dictated to about what he could teach in his classroom.
Hisham al-Abir, the central character in Mr. Hamad's coming-of-age trilogy hardly conforms to the ideal image of a Saudi youth. The titles are "Adama," a Dammam neighborhood; "Shumaisi," a Riyadh quarter; and "Karadib," a Jidda prison. In the trilogy, Hisham drives a prostitute out into the desert beyond Riyadh for drunken sex. He joins an underground political organization. He dismisses as backward some prominent religious works used to bolster what he considers overly rigid Islamic traditions.
When he published them in the late 1990's, the books shattered just about every social taboo and quickly became best sellers. The Saudi government swiftly banned all three. Some members of the religious establishment, interpreting the novels as autobiography, rumbled out four fatwas calling for his death.
Still, Mr. Hamad says, even if they have to be smuggled into the kingdom, novels are a way to circumvent the lack of free speech. To him the point of the trilogy was to cast light on subjects like sex, religion and politics, which Saudis discuss endlessly in private, yet can rarely broach publicly.
The next generation, exposed through the spread of the Internet and satellite television to how such freedoms work elsewhere, is more likely to push against such restraints, Mr. Hamad says.
He draws a parallel with soccer. Saudi Arabia plays soccer according to the same rules as everybody else, he notes. So Saudis need to learn that their society, too, can afford the same kind of open debate and discussion allowed in other countries.
"If you teach people that you are totally different, you are totally special, you don't belong to the world, the world has a kind of conspiracy against you, everybody is waiting for the opportunity to attack you," Mr. Hamad says. "What does this bring you? You are making an explosive mind, a very hostile mind. So how can you have democracy in such a situation? The first thing is that you have to use the educational system to spread different values, human values."