Chapter 14 Summary and Analysis

The papers written for the Society of Petroleum Engineers and presented at Society of Petroleum Engineers conferences are intended to highlight the successful approaches to solve challenging problems taken by their authors. When one considers the papers in their entirety, however, they also detail the many challenges being addressed by Saudi Aramco's top technical experts. Papers written for the Society of Petroleum Engineers in 2003 and 2004 continue to shed light on the challenges being faced by Saudi Arabia's oil industry. At the October 2003 Society of Petroleum Engineers Annual Technical Conference in Denver, Colorado, twelve papers are presented by Saudi Aramco authors. The papers discuss a range of technical issues including computer modeling, water floods, advanced oil recovery needs, and permeability.

As a group, these papers represent a litany of technical challenges Saudi Aramco is currently dealing with in order to sustain its...