Peak Oil: Arab Silence

I found a link via peakoil.org.au to an ABC Catalyst show (13 minute wmv file here). It quotes Jeremy Leggett, a "former industry insider", claiming that Middle Eastern governments are hiding or manipulating oil field data, so nobody really knows how long before peak oil hits.

[Middle Eastern] governments have not let anyone in to verify how much oil they have for getting on for a quarter of a century and in the 1980’s there were some really suspicious treatment of oil reserves data. Most of the Gulf countries increased their national proved reserves supposedly by in some cases up to double, and then ever since the quoted figures have not gone down very much at all. I don’t believe that for a minute.

The program also explains that after each individual oil field peaks, the oil pressure goes down and extraction becomes more difficult and costly: thereafter, water is pumped into the reservoir and then separated from the oil after extraction.

The US hit peak oil in 1971. The UK with its North Sea oil peaked in 1999. Australia peaked in 2000.

"Dissident geologists" think oil will peak in 2008 to 2010. But the program also talks to an ExxonMobil geologist who claims 2030 or later is the real date:

And then potentially another 20 – 30 years beyond that with technologies that we can envisage might exist.

Hmmn. Don't you love it when they talk about nebulous technologies that "might" exist in the future? Aren't we all supposed to be flying in spaceships by now?

Other oil companies like Chevron do not share ExxonMobil's optimism. Shell's CEO argues that there will not be one peak, but many peaks (again based on stuff that might happen).

Yet half the audience (all oil professionals) at a recent Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference think peak oil is already here. Given that Middle Eastern governments are not releasing the data, no one really knows. One website even claims the whole peak oil scare is a Zionist scam!

So these shills [decoys] were carefully positioned to deflect your attention away from the obvious greed and incompetence of the United States Government and its Wall Street masters, and focus it elsewhere instead. Then, hopefully, a few years later down the track when prices start to bounce through the roof, and America has no Euros to buy crude oil, you will blame gasoline prices of $5.00+ per gallon at the pumps on an 'inevitable decline' in world oil production, rather than march furiously on Washington DC with locked and loaded firearms.

Hmmn, these guys don't sound like Zionist shills to me... Quite the opposite, in fact.

We have lots of preparedness for terrorist attacks; but where’s the plan for peak oil? We don’t have one.