Russia peak oil getting some good evidence

[greeny]

Link to original contents of this post:

http://www.vialls.com/wecontrolamerica/peakoil.html

Contents deleted for copyright infringement

[Cornonthecob]

There's probably some good info here.....but it's partly buried by bias.

I wonder how much (or any) of this is true.

Anyone?

[RobWindt]

Sorry guys, Vialls is a discredited nutter. There may be something to abiotic oil but only in finite amounts, certainly nothing on the scale that is currently being extracted
Rob

[heuristics]

Sorry Greenie
My web-suring does not lead me to believe in this theory at all.
I think there are far too many people who I respect (start with David Holmgren and work outwards) who are convinced Peak Oil is real and argue convincingly the implications.

In an other vien I have also had people try and tell me that the Holocaust was a Zionist plot - I couldn't quite follow the argument, but it goes something like the holocaust never happened, or has been vastly exaggerated, and this somehow plays into the hands of the Zionists. I dont accept it and dont understand the argument.

I think this oil thingie theory is in a similar vein. For myself, I prefer to concentrate on understanding the implications of Peak Oil and working on how to survive (prosper?) in an energy descent world...
In a world of oil wars. and other resource-driven conflicts

[heuristics]

From Sydney Morning Herald
"Not Happy Woodside"

Barry FitzGerald
July 21, 2006

WOODSIDE has managed to disappoint the market despite its earnings flying in the high oil price environment.

The release yesterday of a June quarter activities report proved to be a trigger for a sell-off in the leading independent oil and gas producer, with its shares diving $1.90, or 4.15 per cent, to $43.90.

While overnight weakness in the oil price was partly to blame,
[CAPS MINE:] IT WAS THE FLAGGING OF A RESERVES DOWNGRADE AT THE NEW CHINGGETTI OIL PROJECT IN MAURITANIA and a cost blow-out at the $2 billion expansion of the North-West Shelf gas project that discouraged shareholders.

Some disappointment that the group's Pluto gasfield was "only" 4.1 trillion cubic feet of gas after latest appraisal drilling did not help the mood.

The only positive that investors could find was that the Enfield oil project was expected to start production "shortly" and that, so far at least, the company was sticking to its forecast that production in 2006 would be 72 million barrels of oil equivalent. THAT FOLLOWS ON FROM THE FORECAST BEING REVISED DOWN FROM 76 MILLION BARRELS OF OIL EQUIVALENT IN JUNE. .

Production in the June quarter was 15.6 million barrels of oil equivalent. While that was 8.8 per cent higher than in the preceding March quarter,
IT WAS BELOW THE 16.5 MILLION BARRELS OF OIL EQIVALENT THAT THE MARKET HAD BEEN EXPECTING. Revenue for the June quarter was $848 million, up from $719 million in the March quarter.

The $1 billion Chinguetti project was one of the reasons why Woodside did not reach expectations. PRODUCTION THERE HAS FALLEN SHARPLY FROM THE INITIAL 70,000 BARELLS OF OIL A DAY TO AS LITTLE AS 35,000 BARRELS A DAY RECENTLY [(did you catch that little throw-away line? ""Recently"""?)]

Woodside is the operating partner in the field and had previously indicated that technical problems with the field's production wells would eventually be overcome. It is now saying that, given the lower than expected production from the field, THE RESERVES POSITION THERE IS "ÜNDER REVIEW"

Chinguetti was developed on the basis that it contained 120 million barrels of recoverable oil. Hardman Resources is a partner in the development and its shares tumbled 12.5c or 7.3 per cent to $1.59 yesterday.

Woodside's warning that a "comprehensive cost review" of the expansion project at the N-W Shelf project was under way was not a big surprise as the group's mining cousins have been reporting 30-40 per cent cost increases in their onshore development projects. The real surprise was that Woodside had not flagged cost overruns sooner.

At the Pluto gasfield, an appraisal well has confirmed the northern extent of the field, increasing the likely resource to 4.1 trillion cubic of gas from 3.6 tcf. Some analysts suggested that the resource was too skinny to support Woodside's aggressive development plans.

-ENDS-


The PO signs really are everywhere - Joe Public just doesnt comprehend what is happening all around him/her everyday.

This is the sort of news article that is just skimmed over while chewing on the toast and cornflakes and forgotten as soon as it is read.
Only later, years later, does the full impact of what it contained become apparent....


I just had a phone conversation with a good friend of decades standing. We dont talk often, but we always pick up right where we left off.... it's one of those "comfy slippers" friendships....... I explained about PO and he LOL LOL LOL. He lives near Pymble so I am going to try and kidnap him along to Holmgren's August talk... I don't think I'll have much luck....
I mention this because this guy is - well, .... educated, informed, intelligent, and aware the world doesnt operate the way we "think"it does.
By the time he and so many like him stop LOL at PO - it'll be way too late to turn this Titanic of an economy away from the iceberg....


[/b]

[RobWindt]

The following was written by a mate from up north, it's his attempt to educate some friends on the reality of peak oil.
Apologies for the length but it's worth the effort
Rob


At last, here it is.

The complete, abbreviated (?) outline of how it all
might actually be – If, that is, you were to listen
to, let alone believe, an eccentric but fastidious
observer of things.

The imaginary poses as real. All things are equal.
Some are just more equal than others.

Relativist views abound. They are the trend
amongst the cognoscenti, and are generally accepted
in practical form by the bulk of our society. Post-
modernism has delivered us pluralism and an
abiding view that all things are possible, equivalently
entitled to exist and that we should not tolerate
intolerance. Absolutes are shunned as reactionary
and primitive.

Funnily though, within this bubble of social
enlightenment, subliminally projected mores in
favour of wealth, achievement and productivity
have become powerfully dominant. Much of the
apparent pluralist choice is manifest within a tight
scope of what this commercial powerhouse deigns as
righteously “progressive”.

In a further irony, post-modernism's legacy of
non-judgmental equivalence acts to keep palpably
extreme behaviors within our systemic operations
safe from any proper moral and intellectual scrutiny.
For example, science and technology are all good
simply because they are possible, and rootin' tootin'
impressive to boot. You'd be a redneck or a luddite
to disagree. This intolerance is conveyed as a passive
aggressive disdain and applied with the full weight
and breadth of the status quo.

The people that do demonstrate innate recoil to
our banal but excited surge “forward” are easily
marginalised. Many of them are “losers” within our
prevailing socio-economic machinery. Furthermore
it is true that many of these losers are both ignorant
and in regional locations, both attributes due in most
part to the centralising, elite generating function of
the system that they are griping about. Sadly these
attributes also mean that these objectors are often
clumsy, simplistic, ridiculous and even self-defeating
in framing their complaints.

Nonetheless their complaints are, in essence, very
real. Destiny now has it that they may not be left
to eat cake for a lot longer. Not because they will
effectively rise up, but because the hideously stupid
contrivance that burgeons above them will soon
collapse. More on that a bit later.

So what is real?

It is vital to realise that absolutes do exist, that
they are quite simple and discernable, and that they
need to be worked from and not sought via layers of
social or intellectual relativism.

We simply need to look to basic physics for our
fundamental pivot, which surely is not too much to
ask in a technologically proud world. Is it? Well it is
because our technology, and our scientists in most
part, are owned by entrepreneurs in tandem with
the economists and politicians that lick the mogul's
behinds for nutrition and favour. Scientific purpose
and application have been corrupted and now parade
quite precociously, just as the emperor's new clothes.

Simple physics tells us that everything, in our part
of the universe at least, is made of only two basic
components: matter and energy.

It also tells us that all matter takes its composed
form and function from the energy available to it.
Reduced energy means reduced material form and
function.

It also tells us that energy incessantly dissipates
from high concentration to low concentration. This
is defined as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and the
loss of material form and function that accompanies
the dissipation is called entropy.

With just these three basic and widely accepted
physical tenets, we can understand a lot about
ourselves, our capabilities, and our most pressing
social obligations. If we want to!

Of course we do, so let's take a quick, guided tour
of physical reality as it relates to our daily existence.

Our sun is constantly dissipating its energy
according to the Second Law's definition. In about
5 billion years it will be cold and dead. No need to
lose any sleep over that though.

Objects in the path of this energy flow, such as
earth and the other planets, absorb it as it strikes
them in concentration. They also dissipate it back
into space as it diffuses through their mass and
presents itself in ambient concentrations above that
of the connected outlying void. The energy radiated
is always equal to the amount absorbed. Except for
Earth. Earth is different. Earth has life.

Life uses incoming energy to build complex, self-
replicating, expanding systems. As these grow in
mass and complexity, they are able to absorb even
more energy and to grow and diversify even further.
These life systems are an energy sink as well as a
circuit within which individual life units and groups
can draw energy and act, as semi-autonomous
appliances if you like, within an enormous grid. This
life mass also interacts with geophysical components
to further extend the sink and circuit capacity,
ie energy storage and flow. Such hybrid systems
include the water cycle and the carbon cycle.

In this completely unique manner life interrupts
entropy in its incessant charge toward complete and
utter diffusion of all things.

So what?

Well, basically the quality and diversity of life on
earth, its forms and networks of forms, is the only
means by which incoming solar energy is trapped
and accumulated on our planet. Essentially bio-
diversity is, in its layered interactive complexity,
a densification of solar energy storage and energy
delivery niches from which even more diversity can
operate and develop, thus in turn giving rise to even
more solar energy storage and flow capacity.

We are material beings and need energy to simply
survive at all, let alone to create social fabrications
within which to entertain our dreams as reality.
Consequently this natural energy supply system is
absolutely vital. As we are high-order predators we
need a lot of energy. This elevated demand makes
the fullness of life's diversity, with the attendant
depth and balance of its energy grid, absolutely
critical to our survival. Our various social and
psychological aspirations extend this energy demand
and dependence even further.

This is a grave paradox as our imagined needs,
actuated by our intellectual and physical capacity,
tends to drive us to strip form and space (both of
which we can imagine to be wealth, and worse,
privatisable wealth) from the very systems that we
need operational in abundance to just survive.

Many traditional social systems were long-
lived due to their development of mores and lores
that understood and maintained local energy
fundamentals. Codes of care and responsibility
to dynamic landscape form and function were
conveyed to all constituents, embedded and
celebrated via spiritual myth and legend. This
method recognises that most people are emotionally
(story) rather than intellectually (fact) oriented.

When the basis and objectives of the stories were
comprehensively sound, the culture flourished, not
by physical growth but by secure tenure upon local
landscape over vast time, and by an accumulating
depth of social experience and feeling. A vital aspect
herein is the extent to which the minority of thinkers
and planners feel connected to the lot and fate of the
believers or doers. This arbitrates whether the social
system will be one of synergy or manipulation. Scale
is a direct factor in this determination. It is also a
direct factor in the degree or rate of local energy
depletion. Social scale drives both the development
of manipulative elite power and ultimate social
collapse due to resource exhaustion. And it has
happened repetitively over history. Beyond a certain
quite modest social scale, it has happened without
exception.

Ours is the most recent of these over-inflated,
inequitable social manipulations. In a madness born
of arrogant theocratic and technocratic stupidity, we
have lost our view of the simple fundamental. Even
though our most basic science spells it out so clearly.
This provides a dire example of how we proudly
know so much but foolishly understand so little.

Our current social madness is purposefully
geared to expand and accelerate the extent and rate
at which it dismantles biophysical diversity and
function. It does this as it also elevates its embedded
energy demand via expansion of both population
and myriad complex synthetic systems that seek to
furnish the social expectations. Our socio-economic
vehicle can pursue this fundamentally dissonant
course solely because it is driven and armoured
by its opportunistic exploitation of huge stores of
fossilised solar energy. However this energy store
is finite. It is only a temporary adjunct to our more
permanent need to survive upon the temporal store
and flow of solar energy through bio-physical
systems - the very systems that we are stripping
madly in our intoxicated growth.

The adjunct nature of this power stream, and the
bounds and proximity of its finiteness, is completely
unappreciated if not actively ignored. Our social
attitude is that we have an innate unlimited power to
innovate and extrapolate our will. There is mad but
popular contention that we may not even need nature
anymore as we are so technically proficient. This
notion actually gets discussed seriously in public
and, more disturbingly, is quite evidently a default
parameter of economic and political decision-
making.

Even most environmental advocates seem to
see the web of life as an aesthetic pleasure and/or
a moral imperative rather than the only durable
battery and power plug we have through which to
draw our social and individual need for energy. Most
“alternate progressive thought” is thoughtlessly
subscribed to the new secular religion of humanism
and believes unassailably that we can continue to
grow a .triple bottom line' economy by way of
ethical and optimum technologies. They exhibit no
real understanding of the singular, basic source of
energy and its physical constraints. Or of its vital
requirement by ALL forms of material association
and activity, INCLUDING human innovation. And
that is the “good”guys. Oh dear.

But what does it all mean to us?

So, yeah, that's an unfortunate big picture but
we all have to get on with our lives don't we. We
can't all be pre-possessed with changing the world
(a popular little epithet for marginalising critics
of denial that rates up there with “he/she is so
passionate”).

There may be persons who think they could have
been in Aceh last year and ignored the tsunami
because it was just too big and too much to think
about. If so then they could equivalently ignore this
large topic. The point of this absurdity is to illustrate
that size of issue isn't the active arbiter of our
attention. It is imminence of impact.

Socially and individually we have a pressing
sense of the immediate that directs what we will
practically care about. We compel ourselves to look
after our children but don't really give too much of
a practical toss about their children, and certainly
not about their children's children. The most
amazing thing about the more competent traditional
cultures is the manner in which they connected
social attention to events and priorities that fell
across a huge time span far beyond the immediate.
Our rationalist scientific method derides the tools
they employed so effectively to do this as simple
superstition, fantasy and primitive barbarianism.
As it thinks this it dismantles tomorrow for today's
convenience on the unverified and religious
assumption that it can refurbish the devastation with
its own synthetic image of reality.

The time is nigh where we will see about this.
The faith is about to be tested.

Global oil extraction is about to or perhaps
even has already peaked. Demand for oil however
continues to grow. Our economy depends upon
material growth. Material growth, and the complex
order of mechanisms and systems manufactured and
maintained within it, depends entirely upon access
to energy. Basic physics – the 1st and 2nd Laws of
Thermodynamics. Just as with the bio-physical
model described earlier it must draw upon energy
to feed both growth and maintenance to its bulk.
However it does not and cannot autonomously
furnish and recycle it own supply. It mimics and
seeks to replace natural systems but is not self-
sustaining from ambient sunshine as they are. There
is much rhetoric to that end, but no substance.

Our huge socio-economic air-mattress gets the
energy for its ongoing inflation from…?

This is an utterly vital question that hardly anyone
ever thinks about. Everyone assumes a lot, but they
don't ever think much about it. Too big. Who wants
to save the world? Who's that passionate?

Can you imaging taking off across the desert in
a car with no fuel gauge and no map of the fuel or
water stops. Completely irresponsible. Wouldn't
do it. Certainly wouldn't take the kids along.
But we will happily head, with our kids, into an
eternity of travel across a desert of our own recent
and ongoing construction, with no concern for our
fuel consumption or its supply. And fuck me if our
generation's shift at the wheel hasn't been stuck with
the first coughs issuing out of the depleted tank.

Liquid hydrocarbons furnish 60% of global
energy consumption and about 90% of the
economically vital transport sector – think global
economy – resources and end products don't walk
themselves to market across an entire planet. Check
out the price trend at the local pump. It's not an
overabundance of the resource that is making
that sting. Global peak gas extraction is another
decade or so beyond this point, but will be rapidly
accelerated by demand replacement due to oil
shortage.

Have a look all around your house and make a list
of where it all comes from. These exotic products
will all get inordinately more expensive and even
unavailable as the liquid hydrocarbon market
continues to tighten. Think about what goes into
each of the things you buy each day. Did you know
that there are around 1000 hydrocarbon calories
embedded on average in each edible calorie of fresh
produce? It gets higher for processed foods. Did you
know that it takes 1000 litres of water to produce a
kilo of grain. Much of this water supply is dependent
upon energy to pump, process and apply. And of
course how many people walk to the shop or to the
job that pays for their shopping?

This universal multiplier will soon bring an
ever tightening grip upon everyone's budget as the
embedded energy costs in production and transport
begin to spiral. How will this budget constriction
effect jobs in key consumer industries like building,
tourism and hospitality? How will those people laid
off or cut back in hours deal with the rising costs?
Will they be able to be kept on regardless because
the new IR laws will follow the US trend example of
$3-4 an hour wages? Will we just need to get 2, 3 or
even 4 shitty paid jobs to make ends meet. For how
long? Until we get a medical bill?

This actually points to some possible avenues for
substituting portions of the depleting hydrocarbon
energy. The poor don't use as much and also provide
a source of cheap manual labor. Civilisations
before the industrialisation of fossil fuels were all
dependent upon bonded feudal labor and slavery.
For a smart society we overlook a lot of history. It is
prudent and timely to remember what history very
clearly tells us if we can just remove our mind for
a moment from the stupor of our peer intoxication.
Civilisation exists for the benefit of elites, and not
the general good. The latter is provided only as it is
convenient, necessary and not at any avoidable cost
to the core project.

But that is just the tip of it.

Economic growth is based upon the expansion of
the money supply that measures and makes manifest
notions of increased production and resultant wealth
– ie the capacity to purchase. For the very rich, the
latent capacity to purchase is power, even if they
don't actually do it. Our money supply is expanded
via the creation of debt. The huge wealth we now
see, smell and hear of all around us is mirrored
by an equally enormous personal and private debt
structure. Neither the wealth nor the attendant debt
match up to any actually available base of durable
resources (aka - real wealth).

The imaginary wealth economy has to keep
growing to maintain confidence that the associated
contracted debt levels can be re-payed. Without
that assumption of repayment being maintained
the wealth it promises to realise by its remittance
evaporates. The necessary expansionary confidence
is achieved by expanding the debt further. We are all
subscribed to a massive pyramid scheme.

As diminishing energy supply constricts growth,
initially by economic input cost pressure and
eventually by actual physical shortage, we will enter
economic recession and then depression. Activity
contracts, profits and salaries are squeezed, debts
are then defaulted, wealth estimates are reconciled
downward, thus more cut-backs and contraction and
even more debt is defaulted and so on.

Classic economic theory accepts these bust cycles
as “natural”. To normalise such socially awful events
as a product of the system is a very clear sign of
the redundancy and corruption of the system. But
normalisation is an effective tool, especially when
driven by the powerful psychological machinery
employed by the mass media. It prevents us from
considering the reality that these regularities are
systemic housekeeping events, intended to suck
up the real wealth (material and energy resources)
extracted in the previous boom, and consolidate into
select hands. When that adjustment is fully shaken
out, public money is then used to fuel the economic
flame for another boom cycle.

But what if there is no fuel available to re-prime
the economic pump?

And what about the rest of the structural tumours
accumulating to clog the near empty oil tap?

Personal debt levels leveraged against imaginary
property values are at a record peak. The sheer
volume of pending bankruptcies is poised to
take the market and whole segments of social
machinery completely to pieces.

Economic fundamentals are so overstretched
generally with regard to foreign account deficits,
public debt levels, dependency upon essentially
non-productive profit sectors, existing deficits
on public infrastructure demand, etc. that the
necessary extent of national response effort will
be beyond systemic capacity. Just as fat, sick
people cannot run in an emergency, neither can
fat, sick economies.

Heavily urbanised demographics will leave
most people stranded well away from close or
easy access to basic resources such as food and
water as prices rise and supply wanes. Many of
these pubic utility resources are now privatised,
presenting a further potential complication to
equitable management in crisis. If you're on the
public side of the crisis that is. It offers many
interesting opportunities to resource owners.

Dependency upon infrastructure systems such as
power and sewage has become enormous. How
could anyone live in many modern houses, let
alone in medium to high-rise units, without air-
conditioning? A serious cost factor even short of
supply failure.

Events are looming like a screenplay for
Capitalism meets Easter Island. But this will not be a
spectator's show. Everyone will be an actor.

So, how does it effect you and what can be done?

Just some questions:

Do you have a mortgage or any other individual
or cumulative significant debt?

Do you depend upon a lot of fuel for accessing
work and supply outlets?

Are your supply outlets remote from the
producers?

Is your water supply energy dependent and
accessed from remote storage?

Each yes, particularly the first one, adds cause
for concern. Not for immediate alarm but for some
serious consideration and research.

One question of primary value is:

What do you need to live, what is usefully
desirable and what is easily expendable filler?

This question will soon become a keystone topic
as the world we now see out of our window every
day, and believe in implicitly, gets wobbly and
gradually comes unstuck.

Smart people will begin to consider it very
earnestly now. Their well-considered findings will
define the various things - values, resources, people
and situations - that represent good options for the
future as against poor ones. The basic concept to
abide by is that things will soon no longer be the
same as they now are, and never will be again. The
operational patterns that are now accepted by rote
will no longer be either durable or safe.

How soon, how rapid and how exactly will
change be?

How long is a piece of string? The fundamentals
are clear, but there are a lot of moving parts.

Will the US and China begin a serious tussle over
the remaining oil?

Will China or the OPEC nations call in their
enormous investment in US Govt. Bonds and
utterly tank the US $ and economy.overnight?
A pyrrhic victory perhaps as the US is currently
their major market for manufactured crap and oil
respectively, but who knows what might happen
in what is ultimately a zero sum game anyway.
They're all mad at that level. Anything is possible.
Look at Iraq, and probably soon Iran.

Will the huge Saudi Ghawar oilfeild collapse next
week, next year or in a decade? Pumping now at
a 55% water cut (65% pretty much means a dead
field), anything is possible and nearly everything
that is actually happening there is secret.

When will another huge natural or contrived
event sweep out the last of the Gulf of Mexico
extraction capacity, the S.E. US refining capacity,
or another key oil production region?

Etc., etc., etc.

Will some happen all at once? Maybe rapidly as
soon as next year. Maybe slowly over a decade. The
fact is, things are actually changing already.

Fuel costs are beginning to soar and there is no
end to that in sight

Foreign and domestic policies are gearing up to
assist in the securement of key energy resources
and to enable tighter levels of social control.

Access to commons is tightening.

Traditionally public resources are being
commodified and privatised.

Public services are being consistently constricted
and charged for.

The last four are very dire signals of a possible
transition ahead to a neo-feudal state. Growth is a
social control device that provides very amenable
carrots and sticks. With growth rendered an
impossible strategy by energy shortage, elites will
return to more traditional means of acquitting the
core task of hierarchical civilisation. Time perhaps
to re-read 1984. The stage play could already be
underway. If so, the debt levels and location of
both individuals and their communities will be of
paramount importance. The indebted will be the
first into bondage and servitude if things go that
particular way.

There is also the possibility of quite softly
benign outcomes, but structurally significant and
needing preparation just the same. A shrinkage back
from rampant globalism, return of local political
autonomies and ressurection of production for local
need by local people, re-engaging them with some
purpose, dignity and meaningful community.

Things may well be good in some areas and awful
in others. Government may get (more?) patchy in its
influence without the intense energy supply needed
to generically manage and regulate vast areas.

There's still much of great interest to examine
in the social contexts of form and opportunity, as
well as attendant individual options But that's the
overview. You may want to discuss it and its various
extensions. I hope you dont want to simply dismiss
it. Not because it would hurt me. I think that option
would end up hurting you and those you care about.

The religious technological peerage will contend
that such system criticisms are madness. Methodical
scientific calculation says they are not. Go figure.

Not just ultimately, but also now immmediately,
what will protect us from the onslaught of entropy?
Machinery directed from a global political maze?
Hardly! It's time to choose. Not choosing is a choice.

[ecodharmamark]

G'day Rob

Yep, well worth the effort alright. Thank you to both you and your friend for sharing it.

Mark.

[Jez]

No offense Greeny, but that article is mostly nonsense with a handful of facts thrown in...which are almost all unrelated to oil production.

Russia's production rate peaked in the late 80's at ~12 million barrels a day (Mb/day) and hasn't got back near that since. Production rate is currently ~3 Mb/day, or 25% less than the peak rate - and internal consumption is increasing quite rapidly.

----------
*Sidenote* - it's worth keeping in mind that as the economies of oil exporting nations grow due the current high prices, their own internal consumption practically always increases in line with economic growth...effectively meaning that the actual amount of oil being exported drops even faster than by dwindling reserves alone. This will become more important in coming years as global demand grows increasingly higher than supply can manage.
----------

Much like the US and practically all other countries, oil production has already peaked in Russia.

If there was any substance to this article, Russian production rates during the Soviet era would have increased or stayed steady instead of falling exactly in line with the Hubbert curve as they have everywhere. Russia is a somewhat unique case, due to the fact that their virtual economic collapse has delayed the decline - their production rate which at face value seems to be 'climbing,' is actually now just getting back to around 75% of what it was at peak production - again, getting back in line with Hubbert's curve.

This is all despite enormous efforts in exploration over the last decade and a bit...and some fairly significant technical enhancements (borrowed from the West ironically) in recovery...and Russia employing that technology in a manner similar to that used in the North Sea...one which allows a temporary plateau or even slight increase, followed by an even more dramatic decline.

There are a good number of 'conspiracy theories' out there which have solid roots in fact, but this is not one of them I'm afraid.

---------------------

Woodside taking a battering from inflated reserve estimates eh Heuristics? They'll soon have plenty for company!

---------------------

Great post Rob, your mate's view is pretty much spot on I reckon. Thanks very much for sharing it...any chance you'd re-post it on the peak oil thread in the links section for people to read there as well?

[Douglas J.E. Barnes]

I looked hard into abiotic oil the first time I ever heard of it and there is no conclusive evidence that it exists at all. To say that it does and that peak oil is a Zionist plot is battiness (my apologies to bats) in the extreme.

[jackie]

Thanks for posting an alternate idea. I have done much reading on the Peak Oil concept however hadn't seen much to the opposite. I must say however I'll continue to prepare.