Search The Oil Drum with Google
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Local
- Home Buyers Demand Short Commutes, Efficient Homes (with Backyards, Parking, lots of Square Feet)
- Streets: Utilitarian Corridors or Livable Public Space
- Summer Streets a Success!
TOD:Europe
- IEA WEO 2008 - Fossil Fuel Ultimates and CO2 Emissions Scenarios
- The IEA WEO 2008: Will coal usage be phased out?
- Oilwatch Monthly - November 2008
TOD:Canada
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
- Oil Megaproject Update (July 2008)
TOD:ANZ
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- Calculated Risk
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
—Albert Einstein
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Prof. Goose, Heading Out, Stuart Staniford, Nate Hagens
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Gail the Actuary, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Khebab, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Local: Glenn
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
Petrologistcs reports that Saudi oil production has probably fallen below 9.0 mbpd. Let's assume 8.9.
The peak Saudi crude + condensate production last year was 9.6 mbpd (EIA). Using 8.9 as a current estimate suggests a decline in Saudi production of about 7%, while oil prices are up by 15% to 30%. During prior oil price spikes, the Saudis have tended to increase production, to bring the price back down.
Based on the HL method, Saudi Arabia last year was at the same point at which the prior swing producer, Texas, started a so far irreversible decline in production.
Background information: http://www.energybulletin.net/16459.html
Perhaps this is the cause of the production drop?
Q: How can you tell that the Saudis are lying?
A: Their lips are moving.
Observation:
I remain intrigued by the comments by an energy consultant--recommended by Saudi Aramco--at a recent Peak Oil debate. He said that major oil exporters would soon start cutting back on oil exports--to prolong the life of the fields.
Prediction:
A news release from the Saudis saying that their production is down because of field maintenance, and that the results of new wells will soon carry them to new production highs.
That's what they said! But only the really credulous believes it. There is a huge market for heavy oil. The Saudis could sell all their heavy oil by just lowering the price slightly. Well, that is, if they had any spare heavy crude.
Check this one out concerning the Saudi's cutting back on production:
http://tinyurl.com/enmzw
I don't know what you mean by "first class citizen". Perhaps you mean the royal family, of which there are a two or three thousand. Perhaps they get some kind of stipend but the average citizen does not.
When I was there the government did give a newly married couple a small grant of land to build a house. I don't know if that practice has stopped or not.
Saudi Arabia is a highly stratified society. The royal family is at the top, and then there are those that are friends of the royal family and those that are friends of these people and so on down. It is called "wasta". If you have wasta then you get promoted in your job, you never have to pay a traffic ticket and so on. If you do not have wasta then you are S.O.L. There are degrees of wasta. Some have lots of it, like the royal family, some have less and some have only a tiny bit while others have none. How high you rise in your job depends entirely on how much wasta you have and absolutely nothing else. But there is no "official" wasta. It is all under the table.
The Sunnis are also a rung above the Shiites. A Sunni will always have more wasta than a Shiite. Well, that is in ARAMCO and most of the rest of the country. In some towns where the Shiites are in the majority, they would have more "local" wasta than a Sunni. But there is no hard line between "first class" and "second class" citizens although there is a strong, but graduated class structure.
Am I correct in that the amount has been decreasing, causing unrest?
"The level of corruption in the House of Sa'ud is staggering. While they impose strict Wahhabi law on their subjects, with public beatings for alcohol consumption and amputations for thievery, the thousands of princes have siphoned off billions of dollars from the public treasury, wining and dining all over Europe and America, building lavish palaces and gambling away their stipends. A minor scandal ensued in Washington when some of the Saudi entourage's slaves tried to escape from a hotel suite by jumping out of windows. Meanwhile the standard of living for ordinary Saudi citizens has fallen dramatically over the past two decades, while annual budget deficits are soaring from the family's high living and the extraordinary level of military spending."
Thousands of princed spending away, and standard of living for the middle class joe going down.
Saudi has one of the highest unemployment rates in the Middle East. They have over five million expats in Saudi and about 5 million unemployed Saudis. But don't get the wrong idea, only a few thousand expats have a really good job making lots of money. The vast majority or expats from third world countries doing things that the Saudis consider "below" them. They will starve before they will do menial labor.
Reminds me of that great P J O'Rourke quote; from 1st Gulf War:
"The heaviest thing you will ever see a Saudi lifting is money..."
I came across that googling after reading your post. Don't know if it's true. I found it highly disturbing.
If I ever have kids I'm adhereing to the Hulk Hogan school of parenting. (Sidenote: he tossed some punkass pop star boy band member out of his house for being disrespectful to him. Didn't see it but the image is damn funny.)
Kuwait has a kind of "class system" ... depending on proving your blood line from the original bedouin tribes (pre 1920) Only 1st class males were allowed to vote until recently.
When zI lived there (1991-99)... All males were guaranteed A "desk job" in a ministry... there are numerous state gifts... upon coming of age, upon marriage; also housing loans (which tend to be "forgotten" after the first few repayments) etc... as well as free health care & education; and of course, no income tax!!
I'm not sure how these differ for each "class"...
The point is, the gravy train is starting to show signs of coming to an end in these countries, and in many cases there's been quite a drop in the standard of living. This breeds a lot of anger.
We've yet to see real signs of this in the US, but it's coming for us too. Timothy McVeigh probably would never have bombed if he'd had a good job to come home to, or college that didn't cost an arm and a leg. We've so far seen a slow rot in the standard of living for the US working class, and it's bred some anger. When things start dropping like a rock, it's going to get very interesting.
Yet, I have a feeling the good ol' boys will be much more open to ideas like permaculture than is often thought.
This string is such a textbook example of the point I was making the other day, and got a bit of kicking around for...
http://www.theoildrum.com/comments/2006/7/30/9302/31161/161#161
We have no idea what the helll's going on....
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
(P.S. Are we now to understand all that heavy sour crude in the Middle East, which for decades they could barely give away as garbage, has now somehow dissappeared too?)
SA reached into its spare capacity and complied and we all knew it would likely be for a short duration as it coincided with falling demand in the usa and china. But, not that they indicate supply will be dampened, in part due to a 2006Q2 surplus of 1.8-mbd on the global scene. As we see in the nuance of the sub-thread, the reduced or perceived reduction is now being treated as a sign of post peak. Complete and utter balderdash.
Saudi did not increase production after Ivan. They did increase production in March of 2005 by 100,000 barrels per day. They kept this production level for six months then reduced their production by 100,000 barrels per day in October, immediately after Katrina and Rita.
You should check your facts before spouting off Freddy. Check out the facts at:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t11a.xls
IEA states that SA extracted 8.75-mbd in 2004. They ramped up to 9.26-mbd in 2005Q3; held at 9.27-mbd thru 2006Q1 and drifted down to 9.01-mbd in 2006Q2 with surplus demand of 1.8-mbd at hand.
It is clear why Aramco ramped up and why they softened. Think what u want about an SA peak. I am confident that announced capacity developments are under way and that the IEA Medium Term Outlook is on target. We can compare notes in 2011.
Yeah! So, DON'T REPLY TO FREDDY.
On the larger scale, 'cuz SA represents 80% by your figures, whereas your HL forecasts global URR of 2.2351, Laherrere's longtime HL work indicates that we are in a new paradigm leading to 3.1-Tb.
With respect, how do u reconcile.
Freddy,
I asume that you are asking me. For SA, I assume that you mean 0.1863 Tb, or 186.3 Gb. I further assume that you are referencing this article: http://www.energybulletin.net/16459.html
There was no data fitting. I asked Khebab to do HL plots of: Texas; Lower 48; SA and the world. Note the strong linear pattern present in all four plots. I noted that SA, in 2005, was at about the same point at which Texas peaked. I knew that the world, in 2005, was close to the same point at the Lower 48 peaked.
So, I asked Khebab to generate production profiles lining up SA with the known Texas peak and the world up with the known Lower 48 peak.
I had nothing to do with picking the technical parameters for the HL plots, and anyone that has studied Khebab's work knows that he is an objective scientist.
What we know is that SA and world oil crude + condensate production are both down since December (EIA). We also know that all of the world's four largest producing oil fields are almost certainly declining--I find this hard to reconcile with a projection of rising oil production.
Everyone has their pet peeves and fav's. The merging of the models is for the most part due to wrongful assumptions or missed data being corrected. In your case we may be comparing apples and oranges. The all liquids data seems to preserve the depletion rate better. I'll watch your stuff more carefully so we can adjust for the differences in components. Thanx again.
Everyone has their pet peeves and fav's
Like I said.....here's mine...
http://www.theoildrum.com/comments/2006/7/30/9302/31161/161#
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout