I think the quality of the post quoted speaks for itself...

I do not know Mr. Deffeyes, but anyone who believes that Matt Simmons wrote "Twilight" and continues to raise concerns about the future of Mideast oil production knows absolutely nothing about him. I believe his primary purpose is to raise awareness of what he believes to be a coming global energy crisis in hopes that through full disclosure and transparency of oil production data and thoughful planning and action, the effects of the crisis can be minimized.

Freddy should look at the HL plot for Yibal, as posted by DuncanK. (I'm not sure if he did it or if he was just referencing someone else.) The fascinating feature there is that EOR methods badly distorted the HL plot and the higher plot crashed. Further, there is an earlier trendline, just before the EOR trendline that crashed that pretty well matches where the latest trendline for Yibal is going. Interesting, eh? Yet despite clear evidence that EOR does not significantly increase URR but only extracts existing URR faster (Yibal proves this in spades), Freddy wants to take the maximum optimistic view. And worse, his view is derived from a couple years of data and ignores the trendline of the prior couple decades.

I look at John Laherrere's plot as posted by Freddy in that thread and I'm going to say that the center trendline looks more reliable to me since EOR was not in play nearly as much during that period. And the increase in URR that the new temporary trendline indicates really says to me that we are overproducing existing fields (just like Yibal), which means that the decline has to be hugely catastrophic when it comes. This is where I start to disagree with Stuart. Yes, if historical extraction methods had continued to be used then we might have gotten the predicted long plateau. Instead, I think the entire world is doing a Yibal, and forcing out the existing URR faster giving the false appearance of a higher URR.

I expect a catastrophic crash in production, with perhaps even double digit decline rates globally when it comes, precisely because we will desperately apply more and more EOR techniques in order to maintain existing levels of production. I do agree with your assessment of Khebab's HL plot - the world is right near 50% QT so if production stays high or even grows slightly then the crash, when it comes has to be worse. In typical fashion just as we monkeys have always done, we're robbing our children for our own comfort today.