Outstanding work! It's a shame it's getting so little digg count:

On the front page of digg at 90 odd.

Getting noticed on digg is majorly a matter of the rate at which the story is 'dugg'. People need to hit ~40-50 within a short period of time to maximise the probability of receiving attention.

Unfortunate, but that's the way these sites work. Getting the story noticed by those that matter, that's another story.

Darn - just 288!

Khebab - I've often said that I like your loglets analysis with global peak in 2012. If Stuart is right here, then your analysis is most likely wrong. Care to comment - maybe further down the thread. I'm off to nose dive into bed!

For me it all comes down to the 1988 reserve increase:



If we correct for the increase, we get 180Gb left, the HL would then look like that:



A global HL without a priori knowledge is saying 90 Gb left:



Stuart's hypothesis is clearly very pessimistic (dotted red line) but would be consistent with a rapid crash of Ghawar probably followed by a small rebound or a least a flattening in production coming from smaller fields.



more comments later.

If i look at the maps http://maps.google.com/ i could see that the concentration of oil in middle east must be a lot higher than for example in us or the north sea. Is there any gelogical reason to believe that middle east has a lot more oil per area than any other area of the world. Then i check these http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/2004/horn/images/13.htm and http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/2004/horn/images/14.htm i could see that middle east are dominated by carbonate. Is it possible that this could create a skewness towards large easy to tap reservoirs that gives the perception that they have lot more oil than they have.

It's possible. Saudi Arabia has (had?) the most productive wells in the world because of the exceptional quality of their reservoirs. That's explains also why they have drilled so little compared to the US for instance.

I first saw that chart about the 1988 reserve increase in a 2000 issue of Outstanding Investments. They had all the other OPEC countries graphed too, and it was the beginning of my interest in peak oil. I still remember the sudden knot in my stomach when I saw the charts and "grokked" their meaning. Suddenly, the year 2000 doomers did not seem quite as whacky as they did before.

Khebab - I've often said that I like your loglets analysis with global peak in 2012. If Stuart is right here, then your analysis is most likely wrong. Care to comment

Yes, if Stuart is right the loglet result is probably too optimistic. Growth is coming from the type II group as I have tried to explain here. The type II group is dominated by KSA and Russia. If KSA is going down or flat and Russia not as strong as it used to be in 2004, I don't see then how we can compensate for depletion coming from the type III group (countries that have passed their peak) as shown below. The only positive news is that tar sand production from Canada is growing nice and strong and will probably meet the most optimistic forecast.



We will probably loose an additional 0.5 mbpd of production every year due to depletion in the type III group (blue area above). If KSA enters that group, well... it means the world has peaked.

At around 7 PM CST, it was 12th on my RSS feed with 342 diggs. As I write this comment, it has 354 — apparently this article has reached 'critical mass' on digg.

If I can only understand about 50% of what someone says because he speaks over my head, then I don't dig it.