On oil: In Saudi Arabia and here in the States

There seems to be a lot going on in the world of oil, news-wise, today.

First there's this:

WikiLeaks: Saudis running out of oil


By Brett Michael Dykes
 
The latest startling revelation to come via documents leaked to Julian Assange's muckraking website and published by The Guardian is should give pause to every suburban SUV-driver: U.S. officials think Saudi Arabia is overpromising on its capacity to supply oil to a fuel-thirsty world. That sets up a scenario, the documents show, whereby the Saudis could dramatically underdeliver on output by as soon as next year, sending fuel prices soaring.
 
The cables detail a meeting between a U.S. diplomat and Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration for Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, in November 2007. Husseini told the American official that the Saudis are unlikely to keep to their target oil output of 12.5 million barrels per day output in order to keep prices stable. Husseini also indicated that Saudi producers are likely to hit "peak oil"--the point at which global output hit its high mark--as early as 2012. That means, in essence, that it will be all downhill from there for the enormous Saudi oil industry.

"According to al-Husseini, the crux of the issue is twofold. First, it is possible that Saudi reserves are not as bountiful as sometimes described, and the timeline for their production not as unrestrained as Aramco and energy optimists would like to portray," one of the cables reads. "While al-Husseini fundamentally contradicts the Aramco company line, he is no doomsday theorist. His pedigree, experience and outlook demand that his predictions be thoughtfully considered."

And while not that many people here in the States are concerned about or for the Saudis and their oil (except the oil companies, of course), what needs to be said is that for the US and the world, any decrease in what they can give in oil supply needs to be offset nearly perfectly by other energy sources so the world economies can hum safely, calmly and quietly while we transition to those other sources.

Next up and lastly today is this little nugget:

New drilling method opens vast oil fields in US


By Jonathan Fahey, AP Energy Writer


A new drilling technique is opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States, helping reverse a two-decade decline in domestic production of crude.

Companies are investing billions of dollars to get at oil deposits scattered across North Dakota, Colorado, Texas and California. By 2015, oil executives and analysts say, the new fields could yield as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day — more than the entire Gulf of Mexico produces now.

This new drilling is expected to raise U.S. production by at least 20 percent over the next five years. And within 10 years, it could help reduce oil imports by more than half, advancing a goal that has long eluded policymakers.

"That's a significant contribution to energy security," says Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Credit Suisse.

The thing is, we're going to have to bring the big, unwieldy US energy-gobbling machine in for a safe landing, transferring from Saudi oil and other fossil fuels, into a) possibly our own oil sources for a time and then, finally into b) renewable, clean energy sources like solar with solar panels and photovoltaic cells, as I've written here before.  Hopefully this drilling out West can be done with minimal damage to the environment.

It's going to take a lot of work, resources and intelligence to do it, that's for sure.
Links:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110209/ts_yblog_thelookout/wikileaks-saudis-running-out-of-oil
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110209/ap_on_re_us/us_shale_oil