[Gasification] Proven oil reserves are not a measure of futuresupply of world petroleum. It is a well known fallacy in thepetroleum industry to treat them in this way, and it has had serious political consequences.

[MMBTUPR at aol.com]

          from          Lewis L. Smith

           digest of item in "Peak Oil Review" of 03 March 2008

————————————————————————————

Deutsche Bank's "oil team" has concluded that the decline in crude-oil 
production from [ those ] active reservoirs [ which have passed their peak 
production ] is very steep. So steep that the World production of crude oil will never 
exceed 100 million BCD, versus 85 currently. The odds are that this peak will 
occur within seven or eight years, that is, no later than 2016 ! 

This represents a somewhat novel approach to the peak-oil question in that 
the Team is one of the few groups forecasting the volume of peak oil but not the 
date !
Hence one can compare their forecast with any forecast of demand and 
instantly derived the first year in which demand exceeds supply, the year of the 
"supply crunch" or the "supply shortfall". This year could even come before the 
peak year, if the demand forecast were nonlinear.

The forecast assumes that higher prices will not dampen the growth of demand 
enough to affect production and so postpone the shortfall year. However, the 
Team states that the biggest unknown in trying to predict the future is 
precisely the effect of higher prices on demand.

With regard to prices, the Team says that supply constraints could push the 
price of oil to $150 per barrel by 2010.   

——————————————————————————

Deutsche Bank is a very large international bank and a pretty savvy outfit. 
Their exposure to subprime mortgages was modest and their losses from this 
source have been minimal.

Cordially. ###


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