Peak Hysteria

Freddy, a nice chart.  One of the features that catches my eye is how the AV URR less past gets close to the Past Consumption curve around 1998 - the year of $10 oil - but since then there has been a rapid divergence.

So this is a bit curious, back in 1998 when "the world was awash with oil" your chart shows conceptualy that future resources were running out.  Today, when there is wide spread concern that the "the world is not awash with oil" and the price is close to all time highs your chart shows there is no problem with future supplies.

OK, so the argument is that reserves are linked to price but this is uncharted territory isn't it, because the oil price has never been driven high before because of market supply - demand forces - and as demand has been growing at a steady rate of 1.1mmbpdpy for 25 years, its really supply problems that lie at the heart of the current bull run.

Can you name us some countries that currently belong to the past peak crowd that will have fooled us and by growing production rapidly in the next 6 years,  attain new peaks based on this price related inflation of their reserves?

Euan, the world was hardly at threat of "running out".  This line is "accumulated consumption (1043-Gb) ... not annual (31-Gb).  Altho it doesn't appear on the graph, your concerns are best addressed by watching the FutureResouces/AnnualProduction ratio over time.  It is commonly known as 40 year plateau in the BP graph and has been the rationalization for little discovery over the past two decades.

In my study, this ratio has a historic low of 35 years in 1978, a recent low of 40 years in Y2K and has since increased to 62 years.  While the metric has no bearing on supply rates in the future, it does bode well for a lengthy duration of supply at whatever flow rate.

Freddy,  why is the oil extraction rate decreasing in the US ? Is all this state of the art high tech oil field technology a waste of money ? Is the quality of the reserve barrel decreasing ? Are the reporting standards nowadays less strict ?

 According to EIA the US had in 1984 28.446 million proven reserves and produced that year 3,249,696,000 barrels i.e 11,4% of the total. In 2004, before the hurricans struck, the US had 21.371 million reserves and produced 1.983.302.000 barrels which works out as 9,3% of the total.

I don't think Freddy is suggesting that we should not experience declining production rates, simply that we will have an extremely long plateau with a very minor decline set over decades.
Hotgor you didn´t understand my question. I am not talking about  absolute production levels, I want to know why the efficiency of the oil production from a given amount of reserves is decreasing
Freddy has also stated that PEMEX will produce 4.0 MBPD in Q1-2007.

Inquiring minds want to know:

(1) How does Freddy have that information
(2) Why has not PEMEX said so publicly
(3) Is Freddy predicting this to be a 1Q affair or will it be longer (2Q, 3Q, 1Y, 2Yrs, 5Yrs, ... infinity years)

(4) If Freddy is predicting this information based on field by field analysis is he willing to share that information? Or state that he will not share it? - for xxx reasons!