Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
by Matthew R. Simmons
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Book Summary Information
Author: Matthew R. SimmonsEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-06-05
ISBN: 0471790184
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Wiley
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780471790181
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
Book Review: An informed view
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been analysing global oil supply trends since the 1980s, and have had work published by the OPEC cartel, so I'd like to provide a balanced assessment of Matthew Simmons' views, and some of the debates behind the issue.
Essentially, Simmons believes that the giant Al Ghawar field is in terminal decline, and that this event will evolve Peak Oil from theory to fact. Al Ghawar is undoubtedly critical - it is a huge field, but an old one, discovered in the late 1940s and on stream since the early 1950s. Until recently, it has contributed about half - around 5 mmb/d - of all Saudi production. If it does indeed decline, is this a major event? And is it declining?
The Saudi oil industry is shrouded in state-enforced secrecy, but the answer to the second question seems to be a pretty unequivocal "yes". Saudi Aramco has conceded that it now injects more than 7 mmb/d of treated seawater into Al Ghawar. This is, by any standards, a huge water-injection programme. Water injection is a secondary recovery technique designed to bolster flow-rates by buttressing reservoir pressure. It's a generalisation, but an acceptable one, that this process is used on fields whose production would otherwise be in a rapid decline.
Is the decline of Al Ghawar a major event? Again, yes. Global discovery rates have been falling since the 1960s. The history of published reserves numbers from many countries displays some suspicious upwards revisions, and often seem to fail to deduct produced volumes. One of the great hopes for new reserves - the Caspian - has fallen far short of initial expectations.
But one needs to bear two things in mind here:
1. "Proved reserves" are not a statement of pure geology - rather, they are a matrix of economics (prices, costs, rates of return) applied to geological knowledge.
2. How do we define "oil"? "Conventional" oil - light sweet crude, produced easily - has been in decline for a long time, but is being displaced by unconventionals, such as gas-liquids, heavy crudes and oil produced from difficult fields ("difficult" either geographically or geologically).
Unconventional sources are, potentially, huge - in North America alone, Canada has perhaps 200 bn bbls of oil sands, whilst the US has vast reserves of shale oil. The snag is that delivery rates - rates of production as a percentage of reserves - are far lower than for conventional oils.
Then there's the price mechanism - scarcity drives prices up, which both (a) deters consumption, and (b) incentives exploration and development.
Of course, you can't find or develop oil which isn't there. I believe that reserves remain huge, but that rates of production may provide insurmountable problems. "Peak Oil", in the sense that production goes into gradual decline, may occur within the next decade.
The influential Hersch Report contended that such a peak is likely, that we will get very little advance warning, and that it is very unwise not to undertake contingency planning and action. To ignore this call would surely be folly.
The truth about Peak Oil is that no-one really knows, but that its implications could be so huge that we need to prepare for it.
It is in his raising of the public profile of this issue that respected analyst Matthew Simmons has, in this seminal work, performed a great service. Every concerned person should read this book.
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Summary of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
Twilight in the Desert reveals a Saudi oil and production industry that could soon approach a serious, irreversible decline. In this exhaustively researched book, veteran oil industry analyst Matthew Simmons draws on his three-plus decades of insider experience and more than 200 independently produced reports about Saudi petroleum resources and production operations. He uncovers a story about Saudi Arabia's troubled oil industry, not to mention its political and societal instability, which differs sharply from the globally accepted Saudi version. It's a story that is provocative and disturbing, based on undeniable facts, but until now never told in its entirety. Twilight in the Desert answers all readers' questions about Saudi oil and production industries with keen examination instead of unsubstantiated posturing, and takes its place as one of the most important books of this still-young century.International Books
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