by ericy
Sat Aug 20th, 2005 at 11:32:26 PM EST
There is a good article in the NYT this morning. In the magazine section.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/magazine/21OIL.html
The author is Peter Maass, who is in the process of writing a book on the subject. He gives good mention of Matt Simmons too. He has the opportunity to ask Saudi officials about Peak Oil, and the Saudis seem to be somewhat sensitive about the issue.
''You look at the globe and ask, 'Where are the big increments?' and there's hardly anything but Saudi Arabia,'' he said. ''The kingdom and Ghawar field are not the problem. That misses the whole point. The problem is that you go from 79 million barrels a day in 2002 to 82.5 in 2003 to 84.5 in 2004. You're leaping by two million to three million a year, and if you have to cover declines, that's another four to five million.'' In other words, if demand and depletion patterns continue, every year the world will need to open enough fields or wells to pump an additional six to eight million barrels a day -- at least two million new barrels a day to meet the rising demand and at least four million to compensate for the declining production of existing fields. ''That's like a whole new Saudi Arabia every couple of years,'' Husseini said. ''It can't be done indefinitely. It's not sustainable.''
I suspect you need to register if you haven't already in order to read the article. If you don't feel like registering, use www.bugmenot.com to bypass this nonsense.
