Wikileaks Cable: Saudi Oil Reserves Exaggerated By 40 Percent

A Wikileaks cable has reportedly revealed that Saudi Arabia may not have enough oil to stop prices from skyrocketing. That is, depending on how you define the country's oil reserves.

Cables from the U.S. embassy in Saudi capital Riyadh reviewed by the Guardian, describe a warning from a senior Saudi oil executive, who said the country's crude oil reserves have been overstated by nearly 40 percent, some 300 billion barrels.

The Guardian reports that Sadad al-Husseini, former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, told the U.S. consul general in Riyadh that the Saudi oil company could not keep up with the 12.5 million barrels a day needed to keep prices low. Peak oil, he said, could be reached as early as 2012.

But, according the Wall Street Journal's Angus Mcdowall, there's good reason to be wary of reading too much into the cables. Mcdowall spoke with al-Husseini, who told him his comments were referring to Saudi Arabia's "oil in place" -- including recoverable and non-recoverable sources. Looking at it that way, Husseini suggested to the WSJ, makes the picture a lot less frightening.

"The world of energy looks pretty much how it looked yesterday," Mcdowall writes.

The price of Brent crude oil, an industry benchmark, rose above $103 a barrel last week thanks to global demand, and tensions in the Middle East and north Africa following protests in Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt. This is the highest value since September 2008, when record oil prices helped drag the economy into recession.

A 10 percent increase in the price of oil that lasted one year could result in the loss of 270,000 American jobs, according to a simulation by IHS Insight.

Comments

[Saywhut]

05:23 PM on 02/14/2011

Hey, Julian, some things are better left unsaid. I always think of the one nice conversation from Men in Black: " A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

[Trollstein]

10:16 PM on 02/11/2011

The Saudi position has been manipulated for political advantage for decades. When Bush (1) was CIA Director,he reportedly convinced Jimmy Cater that the Saudi oil was running out. In reality, this situation is FAR FAR less important then MANY other geopolitical issues, such as:
The method for moving oil from the former Soviet states, who are land-locked.
The efforts to drill in very petrol-fertile areas of Africa.
The efforts to convert to other energy sources, including natural gas and to harvest same in the USA.
Kurdistan (who had more oil then S.A. even with the larger S.A. estimate)
And others.
S.A. is the focal point for dramatic impact and to portray the regime as more important than they are in reality.

[Frits Rincker]

10:38 AM on 02/11/2011

"Running low" shows Yepoka has no clue what he/she is writing. It implies a refuel is possible, it isn't. The right term is "Running out" and this means NO FOOD.

[alteredstory]

12:33 PM on 02/10/2011

Hey HuffPo, can we get this front page please?

You know, the place where news about things that effect every single human on the planet goes?

[Andrea Torres]

12:00 PM on 02/10/2011

i don't know who decided that superimposing assange's picture was cool. it looks sorta stupid.

[Pandoras Folly]

09:15 AM on 02/10/2011

did you know that if you are an american and consume 3000 calories a day in food energy you have also consumed 30000 calories of petroleum as well? it takes about 10 calories of pteroleum products to turn out a calorie of food in our modern economy.

[MJinCanada]

10:18 AM on 02/10/2011

Wow.

One way to reduce that is to consume fewer imported and processed foods, but do supermarkets even stock local products anymore?

[alteredstory]

12:34 PM on 02/10/2011

There's actually data indicating that if it's either or, you should cut out red meat, or meat altogether, rather than going local - it saves more carbon.

Ideally, do both.

[European1919]

01:14 AM on 02/11/2011

And the thing is that processed foods are full of unhealthy fats and salt and they expensive compared with buying fresh produce and going to the trouble of cooking yourself. Which is a fun thing to do in top. My friends and I take turns at thinking up meals and cooking for the crowd, so we sit around each others places learning new recipes, tasting foods from the different countries everybody comes from and having a ball while we're at it.
Try and do that with your deep frozen meals and cheese from a squeezy bottle.

[StopCensoringMe]

12:52 PM on 02/11/2011

Here's another for you:

In their first 2 1/2 years of life, the average American toddler will consume 3796 disposable diapers. It takes 1898 pints (237.25 gallons) of crude oil for plastic water proof lining, 715 lbs of plastic, uses pulp of 4.5 trees for the fluffy padding, just to keep one American toddler tidy. Then, of course, there's the carbon used to transport that nastiness away from the house to our local landfills.

That same baby, in its first year alone, will have generated more carbon dioxide emission than an average person in Tanzania will generate in a life time.

So, eat local, go veg, stop breeding.

A few more eye-opening statistics about our oil consumption habits:
http://greencontributor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=121

[Azeal]

08:16 AM on 02/10/2011

Here's something to think about....


Currently only 2.6% of our population does all the farming for the US that provides most of our essential foods and a majority of international aid (http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm)

For all the meat we consume (beef, pork, chicken) Factory farming now accounts for more than 99 percent of all farmed animals raised and slaughtered in the United States. (Farm Forward calculation based on U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2002 Census of Agriculture, June 2004; and ibid)

The ability to mass produce food on a large enough scale to sustain our way of fast food eating and luxury grocery shopping, is only due to cheap oil, and the continued growth of that resource.
All grains now are mass produced, engineered, and sustained by petroleum fertilizers and petroleum havesters. All of the above is petroleum transported.

The questions is... How can we suport our current population, let alone expect it to grow, with a declining oil infastructure?

[alteredstory]

12:39 PM on 02/10/2011

We need a renewable energy infrastructure that has to be build, or at least started with oil energy.

Then we need to invest in vertical farming space - agri-towers, and so on. We need to free up the acres currently used for farming food, and use them instead for high-density, fast crops that are immediately compressed into the soil, and more grown on top of them, as a rapid method of sequestering carbon, and also to provide liquid fuel when we need it - remember ANY substance we currently make out of petroleum, we can make out of plant matter now. All it takes is energy, and with a smart grid, continued advances in efficiency, and use of solar thermal, photovoltaic, wind, geothermal, and tidal power, we CAN do it.

[casssax]

04:59 PM on 02/10/2011

I agree that we need to do something, but I think having our food supply and our fuel supply competing for arable land is a really bad idea.

[socialtalker]

07:26 AM on 02/10/2011

years ago now, i went to a peak oil conference in yellow springs ohio where a bunch of folks, mostly hippies were educating and preparing themselves for this. when i got home, i couldnt convince people here to do anything. they pretty much live for next week.

[timqueeney]

07:24 AM on 02/10/2011

I'm sure the Saudis can be trusted to tell the world exactly how much oil remains in the Gawar and other oil fields. What incentive do the Saudis have to mislead the oil-consuming world about their oil reserves until every last usable drop of crude has been extracted and sold and the world has put off making investments in alternative energy sources because people believed in the inflated estimates of remaining oil? http://bit.ly/ejurZV

[Sol76]

06:45 AM on 02/10/2011

By no means can I talk about the economic ramifications of oil peaking in 2012 but on a personal level, it could be the best thing that ever happens to a lot of people. Just think of the impact bicycles will have in their lives. Getting exercise, eating home-grown vegetables, having to get to know the neighbours... It may not sound very advanced but it could be a healthier way of living.

[Jeremy Espinoza]

07:45 AM on 02/10/2011

Yes, it'll be great. You can get on your bike and ride... and use it to escape your neighborhood when it's overrun by the horde because the prices on all of our heavily oil dependant foods (thanks Monsanto and Tyson!) skyrockets as well. The most groovy part will be trying to plant tomatoes in our dead soil and wondering why they don't grow very well without all of those expensive petro-chemicals we normally spray across our depleated top soil to make it support the genetically modified corn like life form that they feed to cows, pigs, chickens, and every walmart shopper who can't afford to eat organic foods or simply prefers to suck down processed corn syrup in all of its wonderful forms. I'm positive that this planet will continue to support 7 times its historic human population without a readily available energy source containing about 125000 btu's in a gallon that we complain about having to pay 2 dollars for.

[Sol76]

07:59 PM on 02/10/2011

Maybe those who do not adapt will die. However you look at it, life as we know it will be over and we will be forced to go back to basics, like home gardens and bicycles. As for the petro-chemicals that are used in modern farming, plants on Earth has been successfully reproducing for hundreds of millions of years without them. If you can't grow genetically modified corn then try other seeds. Life is nothing if not resilient.

[VioletsAreBlue12]

02:03 PM on 02/10/2011

There is oil in those bike tires though...

[Sol76]

08:01 PM on 02/10/2011

Then we will have to make tires out of something else.

[sval2112]

06:44 AM on 02/10/2011

Just wait until the mobs are howling at the gates and oil is 20.00$ a gallon,maybe we should have built a few transit systems like the rest of the world.

[Djin]

05:51 AM on 02/10/2011

Good hope they saved their money they made off of oil they will need it in the future

[beerbagger]

05:30 AM on 02/10/2011

Photoshop Fail!!!

[dashcat]

04:33 AM on 02/10/2011

Oh gosh, Saudis are running out of oil. I remember people in the 70s saying they (saudis) would run out of oil just about ......NOW, Hmm

We had 40 nyears to develope new sources of energy but we couldn't be bothered.

[Earl]

05:43 AM on 02/10/2011

Jimmy Carter had the right idea, but Reagan took the solar panels off the White House.

[Torak Nor]

03:35 AM on 02/10/2011

Uum God created infinite sweet crude for out consumption.

The idea that there is a limited supply is bound to the 'theory' of 'evolution'.

LOL !!!