Energy man

At the ASPO conference a well-connected industry insider who wishes not to be directly quoted told me that his own sources inside Saudi Arabia insist that production from Ghawar is now down to less than three million barrels per day, and that the Saudis are maintaining total production at only slowly dwindling levels by producing other fields at maximum rates. This, if true, would be a bombshell: most estimates give production from Ghawar at 5.5 Mb/d.

My source, a highly respected oil industry consultant, goes on to advise me that "If true, it is not unexpected, and it means that the two largest producing fields in the world are crashing. BTW, the Saudi stock market crashed earlier this year because of heavy insider selling by the Saudi royal family. Ghawar + Cantarell crashing means explosive increases in oil prices."

So, if you look at the prospect of $200 oil, the Chinese cutting supply deals with Iran, and the Russians buying them nuclear development materials, it means that Iran (which will be putting out about 5% of the entire world's energy supplies as Cantarell and Ghawar production collapses will become an even more strategic asset. The clock is running on an energy-driven die-off and the neocons and a lot of others know the hour is late and, as energy banker Matthews Simmons has said so many times, the West doesn't have a "Plan B."