Saudi Arabia yet had major projects to replace depletion scheduled. By their own reports they were expecting to reach peak production capacity in 2009 when another million barrel a day project is brought online. So far their national depletion rates might not greatly exceed 10 percent. OPEC cut back production when the price of oil seemed to be heading to $50 a barrel. The plunge in production coincided with an OPEC cut. The OPEC cuts may have masked some production declines, yet the crude + condensates increases must offset part if not all of their declines.

Moe-Gamble'
I'll look. That's a good part of what I'm describing-Saudi is not forced to abandon their reservoirs early compared with multinational oil companies. So they will get a higher rate of recovery if they want to.They can shut in oil wells until they become profitable to operate them again rather than plug them out.

The multinational oil companies have a monstreous overhead cost component which is not spent by national oil companies or independents operating soley in the US or Canada. They require a steady diet of giant oil fields with the occasional supergiant coming on line to stay profitable, and they have screwed the pooch in reguards to operating in most of the world. If a company has a well deserved reputation for interfering in internal politics of producing countries any patriot would want them only in some other country. The chickens have come home to roost and the western european multi-nationals now can't explore in 88% of the potential acreage in the world, and they've just about drilled up the remaining acreage.

Independents have a lot higher EROEI than multinationals too. The don't hire geochemists-they hire service companies with geochemists and every dollar spent has a real prospect to justify the expenditure. So the IOCs are going to have to get out of the E&P business as they know it within the next few years, IMHO. Bob Ebersole