Some insiders reject ‘peak-oil theory’

Saudi official says more than a century’s worth of oil remains

Leading players in the petroleum industry, including Saudi Arabia and Exxon Mobil Corp., are aggressively arguing that plenty of crude oil remains for world consumption, in an effort to counter critics who contend crude output is about to plateau.

That argument, known as the peak-oil theory, has provided intellectual backing for the boom in crude prices and sowed doubts among some policy makers about crude’s long-term reliability as an energy source. Such doubts, coupled with concern over sky-high prices, have added impetus to the search for oil substitutes–including in Washington, where President Bush this year declared the U.S. “addicted to oil” and sparked a boom in interest in ethanol.

Some in the industry now are keen to fight the threat posed by such fears.

Tuesday, Abdallah S. Jum’ah, chief executive of Saudi Arabian state-owned Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company by production, argued during a speech in Vienna that the world has more than a century’s worth of crude left at current rates of production. His talk followed similar remarks by a senior Exxon executive this week. Spokesmen for Exxon and Aramco said they aren’t coordinating their remarks.

Wall St. Journal