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26 March 2007 Today on The Oil Drum, Stuart Staniford, looks at the largest fields in Saudi Arabia (KSA) in great detail, especially discussing (and explaining the implications of) important details such as 'water cut' (injection of water into an oil pocket). The evidence indicates a plateau and a likely decline in Saudi production due to their increasing inability to produce levels of light sweet crude. Since KSA is the world's largest producer of oil, their reserves are analyzed very closely and estimates vary on the amount of economically recoverable oil in Saudi Arabia. The raw data are not available to outside scrutiny. The International Energy Agency has predicted that Saudi oil output will double during the next two decades, projecting production of 7 gigabarrels per year in 2020, although this seems unlikely, if only for political reasons. The world is expecting and addicted to this oil, so if demand continues to grow and supply stays flat, prices will escalate over time and further exacerbate the geopolitical conundrum of energy. Here's a link to this story: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2393 Best, Prof. Goose -- About The Oil Drum: TOD is a community constructed with the purpose of bringing together intelligent people to have intelligent empirically-based discussions of the future of our energy supply. Most of our roster of editors and contributors possess advanced degrees (MAs, MScs, and Ph.D.s) from many disciplines including engineering, physics, other hard sciences, the social sciences, as well as other relevant fields. Our goal is to influence the discourse about our energy future by facilitating informed and empirically-based discussion about the future of our energy supply. Simply put, we must push for a better discourse about, and understanding of, our energy supply--the geopolitical, political, and social aspects of a plateauing supply with ever growing global demand could have an impact on the daily lives, especially of those who are less fortunate. The question of when the "peak" will be--a question that can be debated by rational people, provided they had the requisite information--needs to be debated more forthrightly and in much more detail and with much more transparency amd frequency than is currently the case. Too much is at stake not to do so. The Oil Drum http://theoildrum.com
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