Making predictions and forecasts is not a requirement for being credible.

Being correct is a requirement for credibility when constantly making predictions.

That's equivalent to a recovery factor of 95% based on OIIP of 600 Gb.

Or they know more about their oil in place than you do. Attacking them based on how well their statements fit your assumptions doesn't do your argument any favours.

To present an analysis that's going to be useful to external observers, you've got to be honest about where your analysis might be wrong, and this is one of those places. Instead of immediately leaping to the conclusion that any discrepancy between your model and their statements is a lie on their part, it would be much more helpful for your analysis to consider the possibility that they're not blatantly lying, that they really do have more oil than you think, and why that might be.

As it is, it sounds like you've made up your mind already, and you're just berating the Saudis for not agreeing with you.

Given the lack of significant new discoveries, this 2005 ASPO presentation estimates that in 2003 the OIIP was a more realistic 580 Gb as shown below in Fig 3, instead of Aramco’s claimed 700 Gb.

British fields found an average of 20-25% growth in estimated reserves as they aged (slide 13), but your graph appears to not include any similar growth for Saudi fields.

It's worth noting that 580Gb + 20% = 696Gb, suggesting that the claimed Saudi increases could have come predominately from the types of known-field growth that British fields saw.

If you want to argue that Saudi fields have not seem similar reserve growth, you've got to explain what makes them so different from British (and, IIRC, American) fields, or at least show evidence that it's common for large oil provinces to show no reserve growth. As it is, you're making a huge assumption (no reserve growth) that is (a) contradicted by the statements of the owners of the fields, and (b) runs counter to available evidence about other fields. That kind of assumption is not a good basis for an argument.

However, Aramco’s statement that it is the world’s leading oil producer is now false as it now second after Russia since 2006.

Two points:

1. "Leading" is not necessarily synonymous with "largest". If they're the most influential - and, as largest exporter and dominant partner in OPEC, they probably are - then it's not entirely unreasonable to call them "leading".
2. EIA data gives Saudi oil production as 10.6Mb/d, vs. 9.8Mb/d for Russia (C+C+NGL). You might not want to include NGL as "oil", but both EIA and IEA include it in their "oil supply" number, so it doesn't actually matter what you want.

You fixate on C+C, but the rest of the world doesn't care about that number. They care about "oil supply", for which Saudi Arabia has not dipped below 10Mb/d in more than two years, while Russia has not climbed above it (EIA data, C+C+NGL).

Perhaps NGLs should be discounted by their energy content; that would be quite reasonable if we're trying to make a fair comparison. That would put Saudi production below Russia for 2007, but well above for what we've seen of 2008.

Godwin's Law has not been violated.

Irrelevant, really. Breathlessly comparing Saudi statements about their own oil production with Nazi propaganda makes you look like a raving nutjob to anyone who's the least bit of an "outsider", and taints everyone you're associated with.

It's utterly unhelpful.

Probably the easiest way to strengthen your argument is by removing all of your ranting about propaganda and Nazis. It serves no purpose other than making whatever you write easy to dismiss by anyone who wants to.

There is a good chance that Saudi with exceed 9.6 in a calendar year in 2009. But what difference does it make? You will simply cherry-pick another metric.

I would have thought that your recent run-in would have given you pause, but you obviously don't care.

A calendar year? You mean 12 months, January to December? Who cares. What does that have to do with anything?

There is also an extremely good chance World Total C+C will excede 2005 totals in 2008. But so what (other than you being wrong?) - use a 12-month moving average, or something, but for god's sake, choose something and stick with it. You are making a fool of yourself and killing the peak-oil movement.

And it's not like a rebound in Saudi production was not discussed. We will have to wait and see how big the rebound was in 2008, but as I said up the thread, I expect that the average annual production in 2008 will be below the 2005 rate. If this is the case, we will have seen three years of production below their average annual 2005 rate, at about the same stage of depletion at which the prior swing producer, Texas, started declining.

From Stuart's March 2, 2007 post, emphasis added, on Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabian Oil Declines 8% in 2006):

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2325#comment-165011
Stuart Staniford on March 2, 2007 - 2:37pm

I agree that the hubbert linearization supports the idea that the Saudi's are post peak, but tends to argue for a much smaller decline rate than the 2006 data suggest. However, I'm a bit wary of this linearization since there's such a large deliberate throttling back in the 80s. Also, I am inclined (without certainty since we've never managed to substantiate this theory) to the view that when HL works its because of being a robust estimator for an approximately Gaussian process that arises out of a large number of fields being combined together (since the logistic is clearly a lousy model of individual field profiles). So I'm wary of it again in KSA because Ghawar is so dominant.

A way to reconcile the two views might be to argue that the Saudis have been badly overproducing their fields in recent years, which is why the trend has been above the logistic, and we are now paying the price in a rapid dropoff.

My response:
westexas on March 2, 2007 - 3:45pm

This is why I have been speculating for a while about a future rebound in Saudi production, albeit to a level much lower than their peak.

What we may see is a very sharp decline, because of a crash at Ghawar, followed by a rebound as some smaller fields come on line.