What Is the Largest Oil Field in Saudi Arabia?

The Ghawar field is the largest oil field in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the world, in terms of its proven conventional reserves, which reached 58.32 billion bbl of oil equivalent on December 31, 2018. Its production exceeds half of the Kingdom's total cumulative crude oil production.

Geologically, the Ghawar field is a long, continuous convex formation, extending over two hundred km in length and with a maximum width of about thirty-six km. It is mostly located within the administrative boundaries of al-Ahsa Governorate in the Eastern Province. It consists of six main areas: Fazran, Ain Dar, Shedgum, Uthmaniyah, Hawiyah, and Haradh.

Historically, the discovery of the field took more than fifteen years, starting when a geologist, Max Steineke, noticed the expressions of anticlines, a geological surface feature that could indicate the presence of oil reservoirs.

A group of geologists from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists presented the first detailed report on it in March 1958. The "Prosperity Well" or "Dammam Well No. 7" was the first to produce commercial quantities of oil from the field in 1938.