Posted on 09/05/2012 3:17:05 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
If Citigroup is right, Saudi Arabia will cease to be an oil exporter by 2030, far sooner than previously thought.
A 150-page report by Heidy Rehman on the Saudi petrochemical industry should be sober reading for those who think that shale oil and gas have solved our global energy crunch.
I don't wish to knock shale. It is a Godsend and should be encouraged with utmost vigour and dispatch in Britain. But it is for now plugging holes in global supply rather than covering the future shortfall as the industrial revolutions of Asia mature.
The basic point – common to other Gulf oil producers – is that Saudi local consumption is rocketing. Residential use makes up 50pc of demand, and over two thirds of that is air-conditioning.
The Saudis also consume 250 litres per head per day of water – the world's third highest (which blows the mind), growing at 9pc a year – and most of this is provided from energy-guzzling desalination plants.
All this is made far worse across the Gulf by fuel subsidies to placate restive populations.
The Saudis already consume a quarter of their 11.1m barrels a day of crude output. They are using more per capita than the US even though their industrial base as a share of GDP is much smaller.
The country already consumes all its gas. (Neighbouring Kuwait is now importing LNG gas from Russia:
From Heidy Rehman at Citi:
• Saudi Arabia Could be an Oil Importer by ~2030 — Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
Guess time to short oil futures
Suck sand - sheiks.
We’ll be cruising on nat gas.
If this is correct, Saudi Arabia — never much of a MILITARY power, just a very rich country — will become East Chad in terms of geopolitical standing.
Need to look at clean coal and coal synfuels. Costs not as big as you think. The real problem is the coal industry is under assault.
Yes. T. Boone Pickens has been supporting the use of natural gas for trucking.
And 0bama said WE are running out of oil in 2010.
Gee, I smell another scam in the making.
Let them sit for a few years. I read somewhere that gulf wells, that have been shut down, somehow fill back up over time.
I guess we don’t need a President to go over and kiss (fill in the blank) anymore...
Ambrose farts gloom and doom. If he didn’t have something to be depressed about everyday, he’d hang himself.
They can frack too.
Frack the Saudis.
They can’t import oil, because they’ll have no money.
Vote democrap. We’ll be under the boots of islamists.
Vote Republican. They’ll be buying oil from us.
Many years ago I was told that all the Saudi light crude had been pumped out. What remained was lower quality heavy crude.
This is more “Peak Oil” horse feathers!
The agenda of all our leaders,Republican or Democrat,vary only in the pace to which they achieve totalitarianism.
Also, don't forget American companies are leading the world in researching the use of oil-laden algae to make motor fuels. We're on the verge of making breakthroughs that could result in gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil and kerosene being made from a renewable resource; once that happens, the whole idea of peak oil will no longer have any meaning. Sorry, OPEC. 
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