Former head of Saudi Arabia oil production says world oil production peaked

[Seahorse]

For those that don't know, Saudi Aramco is the oil company that explores, develops and produces the oil coming out of Saudi Arabia.  It is a "state owned" company, meaning it is owned by the Saudi Royal family and not private.  Saudi Aramco, like all other state owned oil companies, closely regards its reserve and production information as state secrets.  Therefore, people have had to guess at Saudi declines rates, reserves etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Aramco

Sadad Al Husseini is the former head of Saudi Aramco's production and exploration.  So, when who is a trained petroleum engineer and head of production for a secretive state owned oil company speaks about PO, it's worthwhile to listen.  Here's what he says:

Sadad Al Husseini, former head of Saudi Aramco's production and exploration, stated in an October 29, 2007 interview that oil production could remain flat for the next "10 to 15 years", although market and production forces would raise prices by about $12 per year from 2007. Al Husseini also indicated oil production had likely already reached its peak in 2006,[12] and that assumptions by the IEA and EIA of production increases by OPEC to over 45 MB/day are "quite unrealistic."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicting_the_timing_of_peak_oil

I’ve been tracking the number of projects, globally, for a long time both in the Middle East and elsewhere—Russia, Brazil, west coast of Africa, and others. A lot of this information is in the public domain, so there is no mystery there. The International Energy Agency recently reported on the same numbers. The bottom line is that there are not enough projects. There is not enough new capacity coming on line, within say the next five to six years, to make up for global declines. And that’s assuming a very moderate level of declines—6% to 6.5% for non-OPEC, perhaps a 3.5% to 4% decline rate for OPEC.

Even at these modest decline rates, we are basically going to see a shortage of capacity within two to three years. We’re being lulled by this current excess capacity, which has more to do with lower demand than anything to do with supply. So we do have a problem in the near term. In the longer term it’s even worse because in the longer term the lead time to discover, develop and put on line production runs into 10 years. And there isn’t enough being done in the long term as well. So it’s both a short and a long-term problem.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50234

Part 2:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50364

[everyman44]

Perhaps the recent lack of support for Karzai in Afghanistan is because he's Unocal's longtime lackey and his adversary is Aramco's Go-fer?