Chapter 12 Summary and Analysis

The amount of oil available in Saudi Arabia has been the subject of much speculation - but remains a mystery. No one really knows how much recoverable oil existed in the first place and no one knows how technical challenges and overproduction will affect the final amount recovered. The information contained in the various Society of Petroleum Engineers papers confirms the uncertainty of Saudi Arabia's estimated oil reserves. Estimating the amount of original oil in place (OOIP) is tricky and inaccurate. Ultimate estimated recovery figures are based on these inaccurate figures, which makes these figures also highly inaccurate.

Modern technology has proven to be a poor tool in predicting this outcome. A wave of technological advances in recent years leads many people to believe that technology has finally made it easy to recover more oil from older fields. In reality, the...