Oil is Like Champagne

Our Shaybah excursion was a first class event. We flew down on an Aramco charter and landed in the middle of the dessert. 

We got a tour around the complex and saw everything from the housing and administration buildings, to the power generation and desalinization plant. This place is completely self contained and off the grid, so if you happen to be on the Arabian peninsula when the zombie apocalypse starts, come here!

Dad explained what goes on here in a way we could understand. He told us "oil is like champagne, it has lots of bubbles in it!" Best analogy ever. So the oil comes here from all the well heads around the field. Then the bubbles in the oil have to be separated. Once separated, the oil goes into the pipeline to go to Abqaiq to be refined, and all the little bubbles (natural gas) get pumped back into the field to keep the pressure up so that the oil continues to flow out of the well. Each well produces 8,000 barrels per day, so when you add all the wells in the field, you get 1 million barrels per day. That is half of what the whole country of Venzuella produces, and this is just one medium size field in Saudi.

After the tour we stopped for lunch (that included lobster tails) in a huge tent adorned with chandaliers and chair covers, but not before we played in the sand! 

Climbing a dune

TB1 making a sand angel

TB2 collecting sand to take home

Shaybah is a crown jewel for Aramco so lots of important people like to visit it. They have an event area up the road, where we spent the afternoon, that provides a great spot to look out over the whole complex. We must be very important people because they brought in some great entertainment for us up there.

There was a little Bedouin village set up for us complete with camels, falcons, traditional music and hand made pita bread.

We played on the dunes some more while the sun set in the dessert, and then had another wonderful feast under the stars (well, it was way too hazy to see any stars, but the potential was there!), before flying back to Dhahran.