The Oil Drum

As far as I know, the only serious "debunkers" are CERA and Daniel Yergin. Matt doesn't mention them but this is the reason why my posts often do.

Econbrowser provided us with a list of future supply projectionson a country by country basis. But the 33 page report costs $2500 dollars and just more non-transparent data for here in the TOD Community to deal with. Looking at that list of countries and the supply projections by 2010, I am struck by some entries, like:

• Nigeria +1.27 mbd -- Shell is talking about having to leave the Niger Delta by 2008 unless some political stability is established
• Russia +1.15 mbd -- Another volatile situation in which real numbers are hard to come by; Putin rules with an iron hand.
• Iraq +1.00 -- 'nuff said
• Iran +1.00 -- they're developing nukes and need foreign investment; a totally unstable situation politically
• Mexico -0.20 -- they've already tipped over into depletion now in 2005. You mean to tell me that this will only amount to 200,000 mbd by 2010?

I could go on but you get the point. Even among those who have read the report, apparently CERA does not cite their depletion rate for existing fields (2%?, 4%?, 6%?). Also, they are big believers in various EOR techniques but HO, J and others have talked about the problems and uncertainties in using them here at TOD.

Yet, we've all had to endure the soothing commentaries in The Washington Post, National Public Radio and the other intelligent MSM outlets that there's no "running out of oil problem" at all. Yergin never explains what peak oil actually means -- it does not mean that we are runnning out of oil -- and completely ignores the work of Matt Simmons on Saudi Arabia. It's clear enough that his main source on the Kingdom is Aramco, which is not credible as even Peter Maass' NYT Magazine piece made clear.

So, the war between the PO community and the smooth-talking MSM favorites continues. But have we been debunked? As Savinar says, not at all.