Shaybah oil field


Shaybah Oil Field is a super-giant disputed oil field under the control of Saudi Arabia and is located in the northern edge of the Rub' Al-Khali/Empty Quarter desert. It is located about 10 km south of the border to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, which is a straight line drawn in the desert. It is 40 km south of the eastern part of Liwa Oasis of Abu Dhabi.
Shaybah was developed for the purposes of exploiting the Shaybah oilfield. It was established by Saudi Aramco during the 1990s, and, prior to this, only the rough tracks used by early exploration teams existed in this isolated desert region. All materials for the establishment and construction of Shaybah were transported the 800 kilometres from Dhahran to Shaybah by road.
Shaybah has housing facilities for 1,000 men, administrative offices, an air-strip, a fire station, recreation areas, maintenance and support workshops, and power stations for generation and distribution. There is a 650-kilometer fibre optic cable linking Shaybah to the main radio system at Abqaiq.
When established, the Shaybah oilfield had estimated reserves of over of crude oil and of gas. Saudi Aramco brought the project on-stream in 1998. The crude is Arabian extra light, a high-quality crude grade with a specific gravity of 42 degrees api and a sulphur content of less than 0.7 percent. The oil reservoir is found at a depth of 1,494 meters and is itself 122 meters thick. The oil pipeline from the Shaybah field to Abqaiq is 638 kilometres long, while the pipelines within the field itself total 735 kilometres in length. In 2016 Aramco increased oil output from 750,000 b/d to 1 million b/d.
Shaybah's weather is extreme, with the temperature dropping to 10 degrees Celsius on winter nights, rising to around 50 degrees Celsius in the summer daytime. Dust storms are a regular occurrence.

Airport

A small airport is located in Shaybah for the exclusive use of Saudi Aramco offering flights for its employees to Dammam, Jeddah, Riyadh and al-Hasa.

Drone Attack 2019

A drone attack by Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group on a Saudi oil field on Saturday, 17 August 2019 aims at disrupting the global oil supply, said the kingdom's energy minister, Khalid al-Falih.