And you say this because you are a world renowned expert, and you considered all the relevant geologic and production factors at play here - including perhaps Russia introducing better technology they did not have before, or perhaps that they were overproducing their fields, and a rest period allowed them to recover? Or perhaps they just drilled more wells - perhaps horizontally?

Sometimes Hothgor, you become so anxious to step on WT's serious efforts that you act like a little boy wetting his pants with excitement. Think about it for a bit.

Francois.

Russia's year over year increases in production have been slowing dramatically. Before you start declining, your rate of increase drops.

So, all three of the top net exporters are showing lower exports, and two of the three are showing lower production. When Russian joins the lower production party is when it gets very interesting.

SOmething wrong with my past two posts... part of what I wrote was cut off.

I was saying that SA is now down to 8.5Mb/d, per their own statement, substantially less than their agreed opec cuts. And, they are raising prices, per today's drumbeat, apparently content to drive buyers towards other suppliers, so maybe the cuts are continuing.

Meanwhile, as Simmons says, all of their fields are very old, should not be surprising that they are nearing the end of their productive lives. And, this is true of (as WT says) all other giants. Russia, too, has very old fields and, like sa, is not bringing large new fields (excluding sakhalin - ng?) on line; their production is flattening, exports down, imo production to follow soon. IMO the problem with bottom up analyses is that analysts are assuming decline rates that have recently become too low.

Tanker rates crashing, rig rates soaring... pretty clear that tanker fleet owners expected more demand today, and rig fleet owners less... looks pretty peaky to me.

Due to what seem to be site problems, my post was lost. Short story - I am not sure that comparing wells from 1920 or 1940 in Texas, many of which are still producing as stripper wells I assume, with the modern techniques used in Saudi Arabia, such as water injection / bottle brush, means that a count of wells is very relevant.

Horizontal/X-mas tree wells in KSA precludes an apples to apples comparison of the absolute number of rigs in KSA vs. Texas. I believe the relative change in the number of rigs is a more accurate take on the state of depletion in KSA.

Hmmm. During the dotcom heyday, many of the larger computer firms raided Univ of Waterloo grads who compained shortly thereafter that many of them were not positioned within those firms. The B team. It seemed like those with deep pockets were attempting to keep this (human) resource from the competition. When the dotbust occurred, they were let go. It was a great conspiracy theory at the time and jives with your proposed strategy...