Oil prices may double in three years, analyst says

One of the world’s leading energy analysts on Monday called for an independent assessment of global oil reserves because he believed that Middle Eastern countries may have far less than officially stated and that oil prices could double to more than US$100 a barrel within three years, triggering economic collapse.

Matthew Simmons, an adviser to US President George W. Bush and chairman of the Wall Street energy investment company Simmons, said that “peak oil” — when global oil production rises to its highest point before falling irreversibly — was rapidly approaching even as demand was increasing.

“This is a new era,” Simmons told a conference of oil industry analysts, government officials and academics in Edinburgh. “There is a big chance that Saudi Arabia actually peaked production in 1981. We have no reliable data. Our data collection system for oil is rubbish. I suspect that if we had, we would find that we are over-producing in most of our major fields and that we should be throttling back. We may have passed that point.”

Simmons told the meeting that it was inevitable that the price of oil would soar above US$100 as supplies failed to meet demand.

WebNewsWire.com