Hey There, You With the Stars in Your Eyes
Meteor Blades has something to say about Saudi PR flack Adel al-Jubeir and his flimflam show currently in repertory, in which he spins fairy tales of endless oil supply and Brogdingnagian production:
As for the al-Jubeir’s claims, the Saudi kingdom has kept its oil stats a closely held secret for 20 years. But for the country to have made significant new finds about which zero information has trickled out stretches credibility. And if it has no new finds, even pumping 12.5 million barrels a day will be tricky over the short run, much less 22 million barrels a day two decades from now.I'm stymied. Are they so arrogant they think they can bend nature to their own greed, or are they simply throwing their hands in the air and saying fuckit, it's been a great ride but the show is over, it's every man for himself? Kiss the elegant analogies to imperial Rome goodbye -- we're being sacked by the home team.
Indeed, Matthew Simmons, an oil investment banker who has been in the business for 30 years, believes that Saudi Arabia may already have passed peak oil or be close to it. He makes a compelling case in his book, Twilight in the Desert.Among other things, he says, speeding up production - as the Bush Administration has urged the Saudis to do - will reduce the ultimately recoverable amount because the favored technique requires injections of seawater, among other methods.
Yet, in the face of all the evidence and all the warnings, the House energy bill that passed last month (and the one the Senate is taking up on Monday) are brimful of pork and fantasy. And likely to be on the President’s desk, as he has requested, by the end of August.
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 6/12/2005 12:01:00 AM
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