I have a suspicion the saudi's oil production is already in decline, oil well decline starts from 50% production.
according to wikileaks saudi reserves may have been overstated by as much as 40% based on 716 billion barrel reserve
I did check this site and calculate the saudi reserves not sure accuracy of data
source:
http://www.earth-policy.org/datacenter/p...gy_oil.pdf - pages2 pages16
year discovered: Abqaiq 1941
reported size blb: 13-19
year discovered: Ghawar 1948
reported size blb: 66-150
year discovered: Safaniya 1951
reported size blb: 21-55
year discovered: Manifa 1957
reported size blb: 11-23
year discovered: Khurais 1957
reported size blb: 13-19
year discovered: Berri 1964
reported size blb: 10-25
year discovered: Zuluf 1965
reported size blb: 11-20
year discovered: Shaybah 1968
reported size blb: 7-22
Total 333 billion barrels reserve for varying years
at 50% peak production is 166.5 billion barrels
if assume wikileaks to be true that reserves overstated how much is the actual. And when their industry took off from 1951 to today how much has been produced I leave it to you I have done various calculations
So conventional thinking is if you have less then you should use less or cut back right?
if you run a company into problems would you announce to all employees suppliers bankers that you have a big problem
or would you try to put up a show of prosperity so that workers will not leave and suppliers bankers will still give you a smile and friendly credit.
So they run up huge expenses glut world oil supply and fight 2 wars in yemen and syria but at same time without being too obvious raise taxes, sell assets, ipo, trying to woo investors.
