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...

The peaking and starting of production decline makes huge difference in the future projections. If we project that a country will increase production three years by 5% a year, but in reality it starts to decline by 5%, it means that the production will be 31% lower than projected. Note: three years, 5% and 31%. If this kind of turn happens, it will crush all predictions for that oil area. And these kind of turns have happened. They have been quite a shock for those countries (take Argentine), especially if they coincide with bad price fluctuations. If investments, economic activity and economic policy is geared for continuing oil production growth, the peaking will mean that the economy falls flat down. That is why the peak is so interesting.

We can really see kind of "Hubbert phases" in many oil producing countries:  an oil euphoria when the curve goes exponential and wild projections of the oil industry growing and money flowing in are made. Liberal economic policy is adopted, currency revalues, importing stuff and taking loan becomes cheap and everbody has fun. At his moment the production peaks, without real warning (OK, some oil engineers may have hinted something). At this moment the oil officials usually make some optimistic statements of increasing investment and boosting production next year because it has been rising before. The plateau is usually not long (it might be less than a year) and the decline begins. The Hubbert curve is mostly more or less symmetric and the oil hangover begins. The drop is steepest in the beginning and the gap of expectations and reality widens rapidly. Nobody has fun any more. Currency collapses, debt becomes a burden, stocks and real estate lose their value. But nobody connects this to the oil depletion. So no lessons are learned. but some rioting is done.    

Even if ASPO is using a DB, there's something wrong with it. ASPO is currently predicting production of 82mbd for 2005 (see the Sept. 2005 newsletter at www.peakoil.ie), even though the DOE has production for the first six months of 2005 at 84.3mbd. The prediction is already wrong.