My first full day in Saudi Arabia has just wrapped up so I thought I would fill you in on what I encountered.  This morning we were greeted at the Saudi Aramco Exhibit Hall by a number of Aramco employees.  During this reception, we were served dates with almonds inside and cardamom flavored tea.  We watched a very impressive 3-D video on Saudi Aramco's role in world energy production and then toured an interactive exhibition on the science of energy production and Islamic contributions to tecchnology and science.  After I finish recounting the day, I will elaborate on the science and technology behind oil production (stay tuned science teachers).

We had lunch with the President and CEO of Saudi Aramco.  He warmly invited us into a guest house for the occassion, and we had an opportunity to visit with a number of Aramco executives and public relations people.  (I'll fill you in on what we ate in a few days after I compile a good sampling of regional foods.) 

Later that day, we took a tour of the compound itself, which includes housing for both families and non-married individuals, a commissary (grocery store), a community center for mail, banking, and other services, a golf course (grass greens in the desert; used to be sand "greens" until recently), a library, restaurants, bowling alley (tried it out tonight), and just about anything else you might expect to find in a moderately sized American town.

Further Discussion of Oil Production and Use of Technology
Today's focus was on the oil industry itself and Saudi Aramco's role within the industry.  Here are some things to consider to better understand this industry.

• Saudi Aramco is the world's largest oil company and fourth largest producer of natural gas.
• Saudi Arabia contains 25% of the world's known oil reserves.
• Current known reserves number some 265 billion barrels.
• 1 barrel equals 42 gallons of crude oil.
• The largest oil field onshore is Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.  It is about 160 miles long and 15-20 miles wide, which makes it larger than the country of Lebanon.
• There are five grades of oil from light crude to heavy crude.  It is said that the purest light crude can be put in a gas tank and cause no problems...However, I don't recommend it.
• Current reserves of oil are projected to last another 77 years or so under current consumption.  However, research and development is continually locating new oil pockets and developing ways to more efficiently extract what is already available.  New sources of oil have maintained the 260 billion barrel capacity for ten years (i.e. as soon as it is shipped out and used; newly discovered reserves replace the old in the figure.)
• This quest to continue locating new sources or bettter extract oil from current oil fields is powered by an exremely sophisticated array of computer clusters and software programs.
• This technology harnesses the power of hundreds if not thousands of computers, links them together, and allows them to function with the power of a supercomputer at a fraction of the cost.  In doing so, teraflops of processing power is used to drive demanding applications and simulations to develop better ways of modeling and simulating important variables for production.  In addition, a highly organized, massive system of data storage (thousands of terabytes) organizes the data developed by engineers, geologists, and computer technicians.

You might ask where all this oil came from, well to understand that you have to think back millions of years...

You see, the Arabian Peninsula was at one time part of Africa and a good portion of the eastern side was covered in the waters of the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.  Later on, a great rift was formed in Africa, which also split the Arabian Peninsula away from Africa, created the Red Sea between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and raised the western side of Arabia creating mountains.  This tilted the whole peninsula and "drained" the water off the eastern side.  The land dried out, but an incredible amount of organic matter-plants, plankton, and other creatures of the sea had been deposited over the millennia in this area.  This matter was covered by sand and rock and eventually, under intense pressure, became oil and natural gas.  This occured throughout the region, and consquently, these conditions led to this region of the Middle East or Southwest Asia containing over 60% of the world's known oil.


Check out the West-East tilt of the peninsula.
Teachers, ask your students to brainstorm ways that we use oil and why technology is such a vital part of a maintaining a stable oil supply.  Then feel free to show them the following pictures.


These are just a few of the products made from petroleum.






# - Kevin Witte - 2/19/06; 10:07:21 AM -
Enclosure: KWitte-day3.m4a -