Book Notes: Twilight in the Desert
Review of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
Matthew Simmons, 2005
Read August 2006
The Saudi Arabian government has erected a veil of secrecy around their oil operations. They don’t report production numbers, or give any detailed per-oil field analysis, or allow outsiders to investigate or corroborate official estimates of capacities.
And yet, Saudi Arabia is the one country in the world considered to have excess production capacity. In the past, whenever there has been a need for more oil, the Saudis have always been able to ramp up production to meet the demand.
Simmons argues that the Saudis are reaching peak oil, i.e. their production numbers will be peaking in the near future, if they haven’t already. His evidence for this mostly relies on technical papers published by SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers), written by engineers about technical advancements made in Saudi oilfields. Simmons points to these papers as evidence that the Saudis are working hard just to maintain production, that the papers detail obstacles that must have been overcome just to keep pace.
It’s an ingenious way of gathering data, but it doesn’t really much support Simmons’s main thesis. So I found that thesis fairly unconvincing.
Simmons himself isn’t convinced by the usual arguments that the Saudis have plenty of oil:
· that they are only tapping part of their known oilfields
· that they are only tapping the easily recoverable oil, but should prices rise, they will sink additional wells
· that since they have had plenty of oil there has been no need to fund additional exploration
It is food for thought how much we do rely on the Saudis to have an elastic supply.
Not a great book. There is some decent technical background, but the material is thin. A proverbial “should have been a magazine article, not book” case.
Matthew Simmons, 2005
Read August 2006
The Saudi Arabian government has erected a veil of secrecy around their oil operations. They don’t report production numbers, or give any detailed per-oil field analysis, or allow outsiders to investigate or corroborate official estimates of capacities.
And yet, Saudi Arabia is the one country in the world considered to have excess production capacity. In the past, whenever there has been a need for more oil, the Saudis have always been able to ramp up production to meet the demand.
Simmons argues that the Saudis are reaching peak oil, i.e. their production numbers will be peaking in the near future, if they haven’t already. His evidence for this mostly relies on technical papers published by SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers), written by engineers about technical advancements made in Saudi oilfields. Simmons points to these papers as evidence that the Saudis are working hard just to maintain production, that the papers detail obstacles that must have been overcome just to keep pace.
It’s an ingenious way of gathering data, but it doesn’t really much support Simmons’s main thesis. So I found that thesis fairly unconvincing.
Simmons himself isn’t convinced by the usual arguments that the Saudis have plenty of oil:
· that they are only tapping part of their known oilfields
· that they are only tapping the easily recoverable oil, but should prices rise, they will sink additional wells
· that since they have had plenty of oil there has been no need to fund additional exploration
It is food for thought how much we do rely on the Saudis to have an elastic supply.
Not a great book. There is some decent technical background, but the material is thin. A proverbial “should have been a magazine article, not book” case.
posted by Jim at
8:02 AM
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