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$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')otal boss Christophe de Margerie warned that oil production may be nearing its peak. He now believes the world will never be able lift production from the current level of 85m barrels per day. One hundred is out of the question, he says, much less the 115m that so many optimists assume. The CEO of ConocoPhillips agrees with him. The oil companies duly announced their 2007 results, and masked in statistics combining oil and gas production was the alarming fact that all, bar Total, had suffered falling oil production. This is not what we expect of an oil-addicted world on course for 115m barrels a day.
The CEO of Hess was the next oil boss to blow a whistle, telling an oil industry conference in Houston that oil companies, oil-producing countries, and consumers need to act now. "Given the long lead times of at least 5-10 years from discovery to production," he said, "an oil crisis is coming and sooner than most people think. Unfortunately, we are behaving in ways that suggest we do not know there is a serious problem."
Sixty per cent of the world's oil production is from countries that have already peaked. As for the tar sands, said John Hess, "their contributions to supply are not material enough to bridge the gap in oil requirements over the next 10 years."
The IEA have been warning during 2007 that non-OPEC oil will peak within a few years, and even making it that far depends on Russia expanding production. But last week in Moscow, a Russian senator voiced doubts that Russia can meet commitments to the west in both oil and gas. Senator Gennady Olenik, an ex-oilman, told a news conference that private companies have not been prospecting in the oil-and-gas rich north since being created in the early 1990s. A former Soviet Minister of Geology, Yevgeny Kozlovsky, backed this up.





