Khalid Al-Falih: The nonsense of peak oil is now hopefully behind us. Sees no difficulty in getting above 100mb/d. Saudi Arabia has 1/3 of its capacity (4mb/d) idled at the moment. Will attempt to continue its role as price stabiliser (although idling capacity is v. expensive). Brought 2mb/d capacity onstream last year.
Incremental barrels of onshore Saudi oil capacity now cost 6-7 times what they used to in 2000. Projects take 7-10 years to come on stream. Will make investment to maintain capacity, scoffs at IEA former predictions of 25mb/d Saudi oil, but will stay at about its current level. Has long list of projects to offset its decline in current fields.
Very confident that technological improvements will facilitate increased production.
Very pissed off at rhetoric about 'moving away from oil' or misleading notions of 'energy independence'. Energy security should be addressed through the framework of energy interdependence. Fossil fuels predominant for decades to come. Focus on efficiency, renewable deployment will be very slow.
So "nonsense of peak oil" but Saudi Arabia's oil production capacity "will stay at about its current level". What does he think we should call it when a country can't/won't raise it's oil production capacity any higher? And if Saudi Arabia can't/won't raise it's capacity, who does he think has more oil than them?
This tends to confirm my impression that the peak oil question is now mainly about Iraq.
3 comments:
Typo ?? :getting above 100mb/d.
Extra LOL anyway...
Manolo - I think the 100mbd refers to global oil production. He's saying the world can easily increase a lot, but Saudi Arabia won't be helping with that (other than opening up their current spare capacity in due course).
Stuart, well then, yes, this is as funny as the rest of the comment.
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