Good piece today from The Economist about the actual hard challenges being faced by Saudi Aramco in pumping more oil out of the ground. Basically, they’ve been promising to ramp up production for over two years now and haven’t. More than a few people have suggested that they can’t.
It is not too often that Saudi Aramco announces a delay in project start-up. Thus, when it said that it was not yet ready to bring on stream the 500,000-barrel/day Khursaniyah oil field development, some eyebrows were raised. All major contracts on the estimated US$6bn project—more properly known as the Abu Hadriyah, Fadhili and Khursaniyah (AFK) development—were awarded by third quarter 2005, after a relatively rapid tendering period, with completion and first testing due in late 2007.
Should be interesting to see what happens when people finally realize that energy and technology aren’t interchangeable values, and that really expensive oil doesn’t guarantee the sudden arrival of Star Trek dilithium crystal technology to save the day.
Posit: what happens when a global economy, more or less dependent on the production of a specific nonrenewable natural resource by a specific region of the world for its growth, discovers that said region is physically unable to supply that growth anymore? Or even better, is in a permanent decline of production capability - and with nothing realistic to replace it?
Britney Spears For President In 2008!
