But I checked the Russian oil situation and found this: http://www.neftegaz.ru/analit/reviews.php?id=518

It is dated 8/11 2005 and is written by Tatjana Zaharova. It cites FAE (Federal Energy Agency) chief Oganesjan saying that during the three previous years the Russian oil production grew about 10% a year. It should grow a little this year but the growth will slow down and stabilize in 2006. (We know from the recent statistics that the production is already stabilizing this year).

The article states that the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources has a more optimistic prognosis that gives a lot of growth up to 2010. But counters that quoting Jan Kapitski from Chevron/Texaco. He says that the growth potential of the Russian energy sector has practically run out.

In fact the Russians has signalled peaking production for some time now. It is already a great difference to go from 10% growth to zero growth. That is almost 1 million bpd missed increase or 1% of the world production or 50% of the average projected world supply increase of 2%. If Russia goes to 5% decline it will take away 75% of the projected 2% growth. So we see how extremely difficult it is to make these estimates and where the error sources are.  

Here we have an example of an optimistic and a pessimistic prognosis. The difference is significant and the reality seems to be on the darker side...