256. KUWAIT RESERVE DOWNGRADE: FALSE ALARM

In #220 I commented on the recent rumor that Kuwait's oil reserve figures were inflated. The imminent peak people, in their usual grasping at straws, made this very poorly substantiated rumor into centerpiece-of-the-week of their argument that PEAK OIL IS HERE NOW (insert scary organ music).

Yesterday, however, the Kuwaiti oil minister put this rumor to bed. It turns out that Petroleum Intelligence Weekly published without getting their facts straight:

"The report contained some right information but not the whole picture," Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah told reporters before leaving for Vienna to attend an OPEC meeting.

"The information is related to only 31 reservoirs we are currently working on. It does not include reserves in another 74 reservoirs which are not developed," Sheikh Ahmad said.

The minister told a press conference late Monday that Kuwait had discovered new reserves estimated at 10-13 billion barrels of light crude in northern Kuwait.

"The new discovery increases our reserves by 10 percent," said Sheikh Ahmad, adding that the previous reserves were estimated at about 90 billion barrels.

"We still have too many reservoirs that we have not touched yet. There is a great potential of raising our reserves considerably."Source

Aren't those stats amazing? Kuwait has 74 untouched reservoirs just sitting there, gathering dust, and they just discovered 10-13Gb of light crude. Looks like it's time to push the snooze button again.

Of course this news won't stop the peak oilers. If some 3rd hand, unseen, anonymously leaked report in PIW says they don't have the reserves, they'll take that at face value. If the Kuwaitis say they do have the reserves, they'll just say the Kuwaitis are lying. See how slick that works? They're right no matter what anybody says. That's the beauty of conspiracy theory.

There is one big loose end on this story, though. How come PIW won't show us the documents they claim to have seen? If they've got the hard evidence on Kuwait, why won't they show it? Is PIW even qualified to definitively interpret documents in Arabic?

-- by JD