Freddy Hutter, TrendLines Research

Iraqi Oil: Black Gold or Black Hole?

kebu77, the Matt Simmons Outlook at your link is indeed one of the 39 forecasts that we feature in our Peak Oil Depletion Scenarios charts at TrendLines Research. It can be seen at the link above.

Simmons was downgraded to Tier-2 in June 2008 because its projected aggressive decline does not exhaust accepted norms of global Ultimate Recoverable Resource (URR). The AVG of recognized URR estimates is 3,785-Gb. The lowest estimate in that AVG is 2,025-Gb by EWG/LBST. But the Simmons production profile infers that global URR is only 1575-Gb.

Because the Simmons Outlook assumed a 2007 Peak, it was further downgraded to our Invalidated Scenarios Presentation Chart upon the 2008 record being set.

Iraqi Oil: Black Gold or Black Hole?

The general negative tenor of this article begs for some perspective. The consensus of recognized estimates of Iraq's conventional crude reserves by recognized practitioners was 115-Gb (billion barrels) as of April 2009. This is only 10% of global reserves of 1,113-Gb.

147-Gb of NGLs (natural gas liquids) and 2,086-Gb of non-conventional resource round out the Liquid Supply available over the next 220 years.

The Average of 18 forecasts of Peak Oil indicates that Peak Oil will be 97-mbd (million barrels per day) in 2030. 2008 Production was 85.5-mbd (31-Gb). Whle the geopolitical events in Iraq as discussed herein are important, the variance in flows or reserve estimates will not affect the global petroleum scene in any significant fashion.