Singapore Peak Oil

Darwinian:

I sat down with a friend who works in Saudi Arabia last night and had a long conversation. For obvious reason I cannot revel his name. Also his job does not give him access to production numbers, and certainly not decline rates, so he can only tell me what he has observed in his many years in Saudi.

He says there have been dramatic changes in Saudi in the last few years. He says there has been a massive influx of new employees in ARAMCO. Many of them, he says, are from Venezuela, anti-Chavezites who were fired by Chavez during the strike...

...And here is my assessment, my educated guess, at what is happening in Saudi. I think Saudi is at least 60% depleted and only heroic efforts are keeping them from a steep decline. They have found that they can keep production up by greatly increasing the injection water and poking more holes in their fields. Their new wells are horizontal and therefore suck only from the very top of the reservoir. I believe that Saudi is only a year or two away from hitting a decline wall. Reviving old mothballed fields like Khurais will hold the decline off for awhile but when it hits it will hit with a thud.

I believe that Saudi reserves, as well as well as all other OPEC reserves are grossly exaggerated and that is the bombshell that will rock the world when that fact is finally realized by the mainstream media. (Full Thread)

TheOilDrum

We are now in the early stages of a full blown energy crisis that was predictable if not wholly avoidable. Politicians are awaking to the crisis now that escalating energy costs make its existence plain to see. It is highly unlikely that politicians will now grasp the gravity of the situation that the OECD and rest of the world faces and the responses will likely be ineffectual and too little too late.

The principal reason for current high oil price is the proximity of a peak in global oil production. Politicians must understand this and then grasp that natural gas and coal supplies will follow oil down by mid century. Reducing taxes on energy consumption right now is the wrong thing to do. Taxation structure needs to be adjusted to oblige energy producing companies to re-invest wind fall profits in alternative energy sources on a truly massive scale.

Energy efficiency should be the guiding beacon of all policy decisions and this must apply equally to energy production and energy consumption.