Saudi production poised to double by 2025: EIA

[demdave]

Washington: Saudi Arabia's oil production is far from peaking, and the kingdom's output will likely more than double over the next two decades, the head of the US Energy Information Administration said.

Some oil industry analysts believe Saudi Arabia's oil fields are near their peak production and won't be able to supply the crude the world will need in the future.

Guy Caruso, who heads the Energy Department's analytical arm, said Saudi Arabia's current oil production capacity of 10.5 million barrels per day (bpd) will likely increase to 22 million bpd by the year 2025


---snip----

Saudi officials have said their country's crude oil production will not go into decline any time soon, and that they expect the kingdom's recoverable oil reserves to actually increase over the next two decades as new deposits are discovered.

http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/Business2.asp?ArticleID=118109

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Not likely

[Zynx]

2. That is total BS.

Saudi capacity has been at its current level forever even with constant projections for rising capacity. Private estimates from the people actually doing the drilling show many wells with no pressure, meaning that there is not as much oil as we once thought in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia, according to unbiased private forecasts, may infact be incapable of significantly increasing production from their current 7-8 million barrel per day level. They certainly won't be drilling the 12 million that was once predicted by 2010.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. The "estimate" is based on the hope of new discoveries?

Sounds more like wishful thinking.

New discoveries have been in decline for decades, and the size of new finds has been shrinking. This, despite a commensurate refinement of technologies for locating oil deposits.

[Zynx]

5. Saudi reserves are at best half of what we think they are.

We say they are larger to help our good buddies the Saudis attract more investment and keep oil prices lower here.

[Rockholm]

4. Whew, That IS Good News.

I can go out and get that Hummer now. Thank you Kingdom for being such a staunch ally of our great nation. Long live our kings!
Freaking BS, folks! Hey Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the hijackers, you suck.

[BlueEyedSon]

6. That explains the steady decrease in gasoline prices at the pump!

Supply & Demand!

[Barrett808]

7. Future of Global Oil Supply: Saudi Arabia ("A Tale of Two Planets")

A Tale of Two Planets
A Report on the Conference
“Future of Global Oil Supply: Saudi Arabia"
Held at CSIS, Washington DC, February 24th 2004
by Julian Darley

[e-mail]

(special to From The Wilderness )

© Copyright 2004, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com . All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

March 17, 2004 1800 PST ( FTW ) -- The new millennium has not exactly been one of ‘irrational exuberance' for many industries, and particularly not for the oil industry, despite high oil prices. Major oil discoveries have declined every year so that 2003 saw no new field over 500 million barrels, and in 2001 and 2002 the top ten non-state oil companies spent more on exploration than they discovered in value, a new and alarming record. It is well over twenty years since more oil was found than consumed in a year. From the outset of 2004, large reserve write-downs, starting with Shell, and including El Paso and BP, have shaken the confidence of the financial community, set in motion an official SEC enquiry, and may yet be just the tip of the iceberg.

Comforting then to know that the Middle East, producer of last resort and future saviour of the world oil system, still has nearly 700 billion barrels of reserves, and is publicly confident that it can deliver the required doubling of output to 40 million barrels a day by 2025. Even more reassuring, Saudi Arabia says it can happily deliver 10 million barrels a day for at least the next fifty years, possibly even rising to 15 million barrels a day – and still for fifty years. This output can be guaranteed because Saudi ‘oil in place' will rise to 900 billion barrels by 2025, while new technology will help existing recovery and lead to many new discoveries. This was the message from Saudi Aramco, delivered on February 24 th, at CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), a well-known think-tank in Washington DC, to an audience of diplomats, CIA, EIA (Energy Administration Agency, part of the US Department of Energy), media of record, and many energy companies and analysts of every stripe.

The trouble is that the Saudi Aramco presentations of Mahmoud Abdul-Baqi, Vice President of Exploration, and Nansen Saleri, Manager of Reservoir Management, seemed to be describing not just another country, but another planet when compared with what Matt Simmons, President of Simmons and Co (the world's largest private energy investment banker) had to say. Industry observers noted that Aramco had never before said so much about their reserves and how they hold production steady in their ageing oil fields, but much of the Aramco presentation concentrated on the benefits of new technology, especially in their medium-sized fields, and the possibilities of future discoveries, without noting that well productivity had fallen by more than half since the early 1970s. More than half of Saudi Arabia's oil comes from one giant field, Ghawar, the largest ever discovered, and the health of this field is now in serious doubt, after decades of water injection to maintain pressure.

Simmons' case rests on the painstaking analysis of two hundred SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) reports written over four decades by Saudi petroleum reservoir engineers, as well as a fact-finding mission in 2003, and ten years of other detailed studies of oil and gas depletion. He has been publicly hinting for more than a year that assumptions about Saudi Arabia's seemingly limitless capacity may be misplaced, but now, ahead of the publication of his forthcoming book on Saudi oil, the hints have been replaced by copious data and a dire warning.

(more)

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/031704_two_planets.html

[hatrack]

8. Put down that pipe, guys!!

No, THAT pipe!