Com_Bat_Rac_Coon mentioned that there is a “Business Week” European cover story about how it’s getting tougher to get at the oil in Saudi Arabia.
If you’ve read my little introduction to Peak Oil or any number of other websites about it, you know that after we reach the peak it gets increasingly harder to extract the oil from the ground. As it says on the cover, “There’s plenty in the ground. But it won’t be easy to get. The kingdom may need major new foreign investors. Will it dare open up?”
According to the article the Saudis claim that they could easily “ramp up to 10 million bbl. a day from its current 8.5 million and comfortably sustain that level through 2042.” The concern of some of outside analysts is that we really don’t know how much oil they actually have since they are a bit secretive about that. Another concern is that maybe the Saudis can sustain this level of production for the next 40 years, but if oil starts getting scarce in other parts of the world, they might need to double that amount by 2020.
These various oil supply and demand models are all fine, but the real question is what will we do after 2042?