Live data from Hacker News

The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

bloomberg.com

21–30 of 114 posts

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#21
post #2

Good. The quicker it fades, the quicker the US can stop supporting this brutal, vile regime and its disgusting human rights practices and culture. Also, the more pressure there will be to switch to a non fossile fuel energy source. It can't happen quickly enough.

Well the US supports another vile regime and its disgusting human rights practices and culture, namely Israel. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure that would codify into law a $38 billion aid package to Israel. Clearly the US is about many things but ethics and human rights are only fringe concerns, let’s not pretend that Saudi Arabia is their only shady ally.

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#22

So 52 years worth of reserves assuming maximum capacity of 12mm barrels harvested a day. Now I am no mathematician but given a 1-2mm per day average and what will likely become a declining demand for oil over next 20-30 years, they have half a millennia worth of oil lying around. This well seems like a non issue to me.

It's a big problem for them.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, it's the combination of oil production ceiling vs population, that is almost guaranteed to be the Kingdom's undoing. Their population growth is slowly unsettling their stability by debasing the per capita well-being. This has resulted recently in record unemployment and a struggling economy.[1] The record youth unemployment in particular is very concerning in a region where that can lead to severe destabilization and the formation of revolutionary groups (desperate youth seeking change). Their oil reserves in 1990 were similar to today, except now they have twice as many people and oil's outlook is getting more dim by the year. In 1990 they had a mere 16m people, in ~2035 they'll have 48m people dividing even fewer oil resources than in 1990.

Unlike, say, Russia, which has a fixed population (net unchanged in 30 years), Saudi Arabia has rapid population growth and is almost entirely dependent economically on subdividing those oil resources per capita (in one form or another). Their efforts to diversify the economy have failed repeatedly and wealthy developed nations are less interested in doing business with them than at any other time in decades. They've lost 1.5 million expat jobs in just a few years, and haven't been able to replace them with new domestic jobs.[2]

Saudi has to figure out how to produce eight million (or more) jobs in just roughly 15 years, when so far they've demonstrated they can hardly produce any net new jobs at all (for Saudis). And these can't be just any jobs, they need to match the present relatively high expectations for a standard of living that Saudis have. If they fail at that vast job creation requirement, the Kingdom is going to fall into violent revolution in some manner.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/saudi-unemployment/saudi-une...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-03/as-expats...

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#23

So 52 years worth of reserves assuming maximum capacity of 12mm barrels harvested a day. Now I am no mathematician but given a 1-2mm per day average and what will likely become a declining demand for oil over next 20-30 years, they have half a millennia worth of oil lying around. This well seems like a non issue to me.

52 years is a blip in human civilization. I'd be curious to see how in the grand scheme the depletion of oil looks. Will our tech/development boom grind to a halt all of a sudden? Do we switch to nuclear?

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#24
post #19

So 52 years worth of reserves assuming maximum capacity of 12mm barrels harvested a day. Now I am no mathematician but given a 1-2mm per day average and what will likely become a declining demand for oil over next 20-30 years, they have half a millennia worth of oil lying around. This well seems like a non issue to me.

"what will likely become a declining demand for oil over next 20-30 years" based on what?

Just going off of memory, I believe I read that gasoline consumption has plateaued, meaning we're weaning off of it and it's being supplemented by alternative sources. I think it's a fair assumption that this indicates a shift that will lead to declining numbers in the next 20-30 years, if not sooner.

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#25

So 52 years worth of reserves assuming maximum capacity of 12mm barrels harvested a day. Now I am no mathematician but given a 1-2mm per day average and what will likely become a declining demand for oil over next 20-30 years, they have half a millennia worth of oil lying around. This well seems like a non issue to me.

It's a big problem for them. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it's the combination of oil production ceiling vs population, that is almost guaranteed to be the Kingdom's undoing. Their population growth is slowly unsettling their stability by debasing the per capita well-being. This has resulted recently in record unemployment and a struggling economy.[1] The record youth unemployment in particular is very concerning in…

I think the point is that they will likely destabilise long before they run out of oil. The price/demand/Saudi's share of OPEC's allowance will mean that the dire economic situation that you describe will play out no matter how much oil they have left. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but that's what I understood from the OP's post.

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#26
post #19

So 52 years worth of reserves assuming maximum capacity of 12mm barrels harvested a day. Now I am no mathematician but given a 1-2mm per day average and what will likely become a declining demand for oil over next 20-30 years, they have half a millennia worth of oil lying around. This well seems like a non issue to me.

"what will likely become a declining demand for oil over next 20-30 years" based on what?

> based on what?

Rising popularity of electric cars, increasing vehicle efficiency in general, potential legislation targeting climate change, etc.

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#27

So 52 years worth of reserves assuming maximum capacity of 12mm barrels harvested a day. Now I am no mathematician but given a 1-2mm per day average and what will likely become a declining demand for oil over next 20-30 years, they have half a millennia worth of oil lying around. This well seems like a non issue to me.

52 years is a blip in human civilization. I'd be curious to see how in the grand scheme the depletion of oil looks. Will our tech/development boom grind to a halt all of a sudden? Do we switch to nuclear?

Good luck making plastic.

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#28
post #19

So 52 years worth of reserves assuming maximum capacity of 12mm barrels harvested a day. Now I am no mathematician but given a 1-2mm per day average and what will likely become a declining demand for oil over next 20-30 years, they have half a millennia worth of oil lying around. This well seems like a non issue to me.

"what will likely become a declining demand for oil over next 20-30 years" based on what?

20+% increase by 2015-2030 https://www.statista.com/statistics/547100/projected-base-oi...

A more realistic assessment from Shell Oil is that oil demand continues to grow over the next 20 years, a view shared by rival BP and energy consultants like Wood Mackenzie. https://www.forbes.com/sites/daneberhart/2018/09/18/forecast...

Long-term oil demand is expected to increase by 15.8 mb/d, rising from 95.4 mb/d in 2016 to 111.1 mb/d in 2040 https://www.opec.org/opec_web/flipbook/WOO2017/WOO2017/asset... (page 101)

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#29

so when the Saudi start realising their spigot of unlimited money is starting to run out, i wonder how they'll behave. My bet is, invasion forces. I can hope though that they'll push for space industry

They might IPO their oil industry and diversify.

Re: The Biggest Saudi Oil Field Is Fading Faster Than Anyone Guessed

#30
post #3

Less CO2 released into the atmosphere I guess? I always wonder about news like this. Is it wrong to assume that the company knew about this years ago already and made the rational decision not to tell everyone until the last minute? And how long have they known?

When I started studying economics the most baffling thing I learned was that the total amount of Oil we had was increasing and not decreasing. That weird fact kind of made me learn the basic concepts better and I think I have learned not to read too much into these sort of news items. Journalist often lack this outlook.

The world is not going to run out of Oil ever. The world is more likely to run out of "need for oil" sooner than the oil running our scenario. A particular oil field is fading means really nothing because Saudi has far too many unproven oil fields which it has not even bothered to explore yet. Now that this field might be running out very soon they will explore that oil and soon their production will grow up. The capital investment of discovery would reflect in slightly higher oil prices may be.

Coming back to the CO2 emissions point you raised, even if the Oil in that Oil field goes to zero in 1 year, it wont matter. There will be more supply available soon enough. CO2 emissions will probably go down unrelated to Oil production as developed countries move to electric cars and better power plants fired by nuclear, solar and wind energy.

Post reply on HN