Things aren’t as bad in the Gulf as claimed

Overzealousness recently backfired on the peak oil crowd after Platts investigated the actual data behind their claims that the first generation of deepwater Gulf of Mexico fields has failed to fulfill expectations.

Challenged on that assertion to provide backup data, peak oil guru Matt Simmons was unable to comply.



Since Platts has no axe to grind in this debate and strives only to serve as referee, we accepted the challenge and spent the better part of a month in our own painstaking review of US Minerals Management Service historical oil production records on the seven highest profile Gulf discoveries of the 1990s.

The result? The MMS records show those fields actually achieved their output targets and have produced 83% of the reserves predicted for the fields — 1.5 billion barrels from initial estimates of 1.8 billion.

Platts