Matthew Simmons is an investment banker and oil-industry expert. He has also served as energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush.
The Published Reports of the Society of Petroleum Engineers
The basis of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy is some two hundred reports published since the 1960s by the Society of Petroleum Engineers.
The Society of Petroleum Engineers is a technical organisation comprising some 65,000 engineers and professionals from the oil business. These two hundred reports and papers that Simmons discusses in Twilight in the Desert all deal with technical problems and challenges to do with Saudi Arabia’s oil output.
These documents can be accessed over the web at The Society of Petroleum Engineers.
For the lay reader Matthew Simmons makes much of the technical language about Saudi Arabia’s oil fields very accessible. In great detail, using the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ papers, Simmons claims that Saudi Arabia’s oil fields are not in great shape. If anything, oil production in Saudi Arabia looks like it is in a state of permanent atrophy.
The prosperity of the modern economy for the last seventy or so years has depended on access to cheap oil. It has been a commonplace to take for granted a constant stream of oil flowing out of Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s largest oil producers.
Simmons even goes so far as to say that Saudi Arabia has been a very responsible oil producer for the world, responding positively to new demands for increased production when there have been problems with oil supply in other parts of the world. For example, the first gulf war, when no oil was coming out of Iraq and Kuwait, it was Saudi Arabia that stepped in to guarantee supply.
Saudi Arabia’s Aging Oil Wells
Simmons describes Saudi Arabia’s oil fields as aging wells, often over produced, with an indefinite future. Added to this is the secrecy of the Saudi regime: we simply have no clear cut idea of how much oil is really left in their reserves.
Simmons ends his book with an urge that we start thinking very soon about alternative energy ideas.
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy is a real eye opener from an industry insider. For those unaware of how oil is pumped out of the ground, many interesting facts are revealed.
For example, water is injected into older oil reservoirs to push the oil up to the top. The Saudis even have computer simulation programs where by they create 3-d oil reservoirs – readers get to imagine themselves standing in a simulated reservoir!
In Simmons’ opinion, most oil economists have no idea of how complex all this technology is. If he’s right, it’s a wonder how so-called experts can be so ignorant.
Twilight in the Desert provides a fascinating primer on the often secretive world of Saudi oil production. Simmons has provided a valuable public service by writing a book that distills complex technical information into a compelling book for popular consumption.
Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, by Matthew R. Simmons is published by Wiley (2006). ISBN-13: 978-0471790181
Chris Saliba - Chris Saliba is a freelance writer. Read more of his workplace articles at chrissalibafreelancewriter.blogspot.com
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