Why does Yergin lie about what is and what will be going on in the GOM?  For example, he says that current production in the GOM is 2 million barrels per day, and that will expand to 2.4 million barrels by 2010.  That's complete crap.  The 2004 average production in the GOM was 1.46 million barrels per day, and for February, April, and May 2005 (the 3 months I could extract from mms), well removed from Ivan, the production was 1.455, 1.397, and 1.252 million barrels per day respectively.  The bottom line is that the 200,000 barrels per day he claimed to be down for "several months" after Ivan NEVER CAME BACK, either due to destruction, depletion, or whatever.  Katerina will similarly "reset" the production level to a much lower level, probably in the 1.1-1.2 million barrels per day range.  Even with the big projects coming on-line, when figuring in depletion I would be surprised if we see GOM production ever make it much above 1.5 million barrels per day again.

Yergin has a terminal case of the "Jimminy Cricket" syndrome ("wishing it will make it so!"), and the sad thing is that he is leading so many down the garden path on oil production.