[SoothSayer]

The forum topic here shows that Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the US said that SA is now producing at its maximum output. (He did however state that SA intends to increase output in the next few years when some projects come on line)

Yesterday (17 Apr 2006) Qatar’s Oil Minister Abdullah Al Attiyah said. “On production there is nothing we (OPEC) can do. We are already producing at maximum output. There is no shortage in supply." Link

Stephen Brown, director of energy economics with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas says in the key article here "Saudi Arabian production is at maximum levels and the only extra production that country could offer is the heavier crudes ... and the refineries set up to handle that heavier crude are full." He also hints that we will have high prices for maybe 5-10 years since it takes time for demand destruction for something as key as crude oil to kick in.

We should not forget 8%/ 2% decline comments from the Platts report here a while back.

It seems to me that as soon as an industry figure says anything interesting, their comments are deconstructed and analysed by forum "experts" until the original message is lost.

At what point do we put our spreadsheets, maps, data tables and pretty graphs aside and simply LISTEN to what Saudi Arabia and OPEC are trying to tell us?

[whereagles]

Some people are listening. A local investor is building a $2 billion refinery to handle heavy crude

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SoothSayer', '.')..At what point do we put our spreadsheets, maps, data tables and pretty graphs aside and simply LISTEN to what Saudi Arabia and OPEC are trying to tell us?

[malcomatic_51]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SoothSayer', '
')It seems to me that as soon as an industry figure says anything interesting, their comments are deconstructed and analysed by forum "experts" until the original message is lost.

At what point do we put our spreadsheets, maps, data tables and pretty graphs aside and simply LISTEN to what Saudi Arabia and OPEC are trying to tell us?

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('malcomatic_51', 'W')hat is it that we are ignoring?

[SoothSayer]

>> I don't really see what you mean by this question.

This is an oldish thread. I wrote it when it seemed that every official announcement from governments was simply poo-pooed by certain "experts" in this forum.

Some seemed to trust their own opinions and/or spreadsheet models more than any publically released data. This is OK if you suspect a single new public statement is probably incorrect ... but we were seeing a flurry of such announcements. At some point you simply have to seriously consider what the normally secretive Middle East oil world is trying to hint at.

Indeed, since my original post we seem to have arrived at some sort of production peak or plateau, so the never ending attempts by some to "prove" that the Middle East is floating on an endless ocean of oil and that they have significant excess production capacity seem to have quietened down.

[gigacannon]

This really suggests that we might see a constant level of supply for the next fifteen to twenty years, I think. That doesn't really have anything to do with expected increase in demand. Even so, it buys time for transition to a less oil-dependent economy.

Even if it can't be achieved on a global scale, it might on a local scale.