Ghawar Oil Field

Ghawar Oil Field, the largest conventional oil field in the world, is located in Al-Ahsa Governorate in the Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 100 km away from Dharan. The latter is the headquarters of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco), which is the world's largest oil producing company, and the one accountable for all production and development in Ghawar Field.

The discovery of this field dates back to 1948, ten years after oil flowed for the first time in Dammam well No. 7. The field was developed in 1951, and reached a production capacity of more than 65 billion barrels by 2010. Its reserves are estimated at 58.32 billion barrels, and its total production represents about 6.25 percent of global oil production.

First indicators of oil discovery in the field area appeared in 1940, but the conditions of the Second World War delayed development works until 1948. Ain Dar Well is the first well drilled in Ghawar. Starting 1951, Aramco officially operated the Ghawar Field, thus resulting in an increase in production that exceeds half of the total cumulative oil production in the Kingdom.

The onshore Ghawar Field takes a curved shape on the edge of the Empty Quarter desert. Its length surpasses 200 km, and its width ranges between twenty-four and thirty-six km. It houses refineries and wells to produce and refine oil and gas located in six major production areas: Haradh, Al-Hawiyah, Farzan, Shadgum, Ain Dar and Al-Uthmaniyah.

The range of Ghawar Field retains four processing and fractionation facilities for natural gas and non-associated gas, out of ten facilities around the Kingdom, distributed between Al-Hawiyah, Shadgum, Haradh and Al-Uthmaniyah.

The Uthmaniyah plant is rated as one of the largest gas processing plants in the world. Moreover, the Kingdom sustains more than 30 percent of the gas supply through the Hawiyah plant, which currently has a processing capacity of 2.6 billion cu ft per day. The Haradh Plant, located on the southern side of Ghawar, adds about 1.833 billion cu ft of raw feedstock for sweet and sour gas.