Personal Finance

s_knight8 · Guest

http://www.ameinfo.com/71519.html

It was an incredible revelation last week that the second largest oil field
in the world is exhausted and past its peak output. Yet that is what the
Kuwait Oil Company revealed about its Burgan field.

The peak output of the Burgan oil field will now be around 1.7 million
barrels per day, and not the two million barrels per day forecast for the
rest of the field's 30 to 40 years of life, Chairman Farouk Al Zanki told
Bloomberg.

He said that engineers had tried to maintain 1.9 million barrels per day but
that 1.7 million is the optimum rate. Kuwait will now spend some $3 million
a year for the next year to boost output and exports from other fields.

However, it is surely a landmark moment when the world's second largest oil
field begins to run dry. For Burgan has been pumping oil for almost 60 years
and accounts for more than half of Kuwait's proven oil reserves. This is
also not what forecasters are currently assuming.

Forecasts wrong
Last week the International Energy Agency's report said output from the
Greater Burgan area will be 1.64 million barrels a day in 2020 and 1.53
million barrels per day in 2030. Is this now a realistic scenario?

The news about the Burgan oil field also lends credence to the controversial
opinions of investment banker and geologist Matthew Simmons. His book
'Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy'
claims that the ageing Saudi oil filed also face serious production falls.

The implications for the global economy are indeed serious. If the world oil
supply begins to run dry then the upward pressure on oil prices will be
inexorable. For the oil producers this will come as a compensation for
declining output, and cushion them against an economic collapse.

However, the oil consumers then face a major energy crisis. Industrialized
economies are still far too dependent on oil. And the pricing mechanism of
declining oil reserves will press them into further diversification of
energy supplies, particularly nuclear, wind and solar power.

Geological facts
All this was foreshadowed in the energy crisis of the late 1970s when a
serious inflection in oil supply by the year 2000 was clearly forecast. How
ironic that those earlier forecasts now look correct, while more modern and
recent forecasts begin to look over optimistic and out-of-date with
geological reality.

Nobody can change the geology, and forces of nature that laid down reserves
of oil and gas over millions and millions of years. Could it be that we have
been blinded by technological advances into thinking that there is some way
to beat nature?

The natural world has an uncanny ability to hit back at the arrogance of
man, and perhaps a reassessment of reality at this point is called for,
rather than a reliance on oil statistics that may owe more to political
maneuvering than geological facts.

ynotssor · Guest

"s_knight8" <s_knight8nospam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:dl5g80$93m@dispatch.concentric.net

Guest

this so called "announcement " just happens to come out as the oil
prices drop and a new book comes out claiming there is more oil than we
can ever use....pretty fishy to me.

Boycott Aruba !

Arthur · Guest

Tell that to Oil City and Titusville PA
Tell it to the TX melon farmers.

a
=

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:25:55 -0500, comics@webtv.net wrote:

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