Some of the largest oil fields in the world

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During the recent years shale oilfields have begun to play an important role in the global oil production market, preventing a sharp rise in prices and geopolitical instability in the world. Nevertheless, the traditional oil fields still hold the lead.

The Middle East has been dominating the oil market through the last 50 years, but in spite of the extensive oilfield development and oil extraction, the reserves of the crude oil of the Middle East region remain the largest in the world.

Ghawar

Oil companies started to develop the legendary Ghawar oilfield in Saudi Arabia in early 1950s. Besides creating massive jobs, including jobs, requiring neither special training/specialized education nor previous experience of working on oil rigs, the Ghawar oilfield development resulted in allowing Saudi Arabia to qualify for the title of the largest oil producer in the world. In fact the latter was the most important consequence of the development of Ghawar. The remaining proven recoverable reserves of oil in Ghawar are estimated at 70 billion barrels of oil. Ghawar oilfield is wholly owned by the state of Saudi Arabia, and all parameters and data on it are carefully hidden. According to some of them, this oilfield produces over 6% of the world's crude oil extracted per day. Some analysts believe that the oilfield passed its peak of the capacity of oil production probably a decade ago. Nevertheless, Ghawar remains the largest oil field in the world both from the perspective of crude oil reserves and from the point of view of oil production.

The Great Burgan Field, the Greater Burgan - Kuwait

The onshore supergiant Burgan oil field is located in one of the smallest Middle East countries, Kuwait, desert, and it belongs to the basin of the Persian Gulf. The Burgan oilfield was discovered still in 1938, but the commercial oil production there started only afther the World War 2, in 1946. The proven and recoverable reserves are estimated at 66-72 billion barrels of oil, and it is about 75% of all fossil oil reserves of Kuwait.

Great Burgan oil field interesting facts and figures:

The daily yield of the oilfield constitutes 1.1-1.3 million barrels that are produced by all oil rigs, operating on the oilfield.

Safaniya offshore oil field

The field of Safaniya is considered to be the largest offshore oilfield in the world. It was discovered in 1951, and it is located on the territory of two countries, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The field's proven and recoverable oil reserves are estimated at 50 billion barrels of crude oil total. The daily volume of the crude oil output for the time of writing this review was reported at the level of about 1.5 million barrels, while the deposit itself is already very old, and gradually gets depleted, while the company Saudi Aramco applies all efforts and seeks to maintain the production of crude oil at the highest level possible.

Rumaila

Rumaila is another major world's oil field, located in southern Iraq, approximately at the distance 30 km away from the Kuwaiti border, with the reserves of the deposited crude oil estimated at the level of approximately 17.8 billion barrels. The Rumaila oilfield is located in the southern part of Iraq, and it is divided to the southern and the northern part. A portion of the south Rumaila, owned by Kuwait, is called Ratka. The oil companies, drilling for oil in the oilfield are BP and CNPC, which operate jointly. Also there's a national Iraqi South Oil Company working there. Currently the field produces about 1.5 million barrels per day, but its operators are planning to increase the oil production to reach 2.85 million barrels in the next few years.

West Qurna-2

The West Qurna-2 field is also located in southern Iraq, and the reserves of 13 billion barrels of oil make it the second largest in the country. The West Qurna field was divided into two parts, and the right to the development of its reserves was sold to international oil companies. The Russian Lukoil successfully started production at the West Qurna-2 at the beginning of this year, with the figure of 120 thousand barrels per day. The output is planned to be increased to 1.2 million barrels by the end of 2017. ExxonMobil, BP, Eni SpA and PetroChina are operators of the neighboring oilfield West Qurna-1.

The future of the oilfields

Despite their age, these supergiant Middle East oilfields remain the most important depositories of the fossil crude in the oil market.

While the shale revolution in the USA keeps loosing its momentum, the stability on the world oil market will continue to depend on the few oil producing countries in the Middle East.