Saudi Arabia’s oil production peaked in 2005

Did we reach peak oil ?I was reporting last week that non-OPEC oil production peaked in 2004 and Russia – the world’s second largest exporter – peaked in 2008. The situation was already quite serious.

Yesterday the Oil Drum published an article stating that the world’s first oil producer saw it’s production peak in 2005 with 9.6 million barrels/day. Last year it was of 9.3 million. It is due to reach 8.5 next year.

Even if this is not much of a problem right now as the demand decreased due to the economic recession, it may be one after if we don’t act now massively on conservation.

2 thoughts on “Saudi Arabia’s oil production peaked in 2005”

  1. Actually, the world’s crude oil (including condensates) production peaked in 2005, as you can see here, peaking at 73.74 million barrels a day.

    Extra since then has come from increasing our natural gas production, which thus increases the natural gas liquids production (pentane, butane and the like, some of which are found with methane) and some from biofuels, oil shale and the like.

    That is, adding “oil” production has in recent years come not from actual crude oil, but from processes with a low return on energy invested (each barrel of ethanol requires 0.7 barrels of oil energy equivalent to produce) and processes which require the depletion of other fossil fuels (to get more natural gas liquids and tar sands oil we must consume more natural gas, to get liquids from coal we must consume more coal, etc).

    Put another way, we are now past peak oil and the small increase in total liquids has come only by drawing on other depleting resources, and by drawing on renewable resources in a depleting way.

  2. Wow Kiashu, NOW that’s pretty great stuff you are bringing us !

    Many many thanks for that piece of information.

    Enjoy your weekend and best of luck for Australia !

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