George Bush nearly pelted with shoes

[Kirkland Laing]

OK, you are talking about figures that were in discussion. Can you provide some kind of reference, or industry organization website that supports your numbers? I have provided my sources, another sourse is something called the Oil and Gas Journal. The numbers I quoted were estimates of proven and unproven reserves. Unproven reserves would deal with unexplored areas. And you know what? Even allowing for error, 20 trillion is so far away from 500 trillion that something is very wrong somewhere.

Saudi arabia has at 267 billion barrels known reserves. Saudi Arabia has 1/5 of the worlds known reserves.

According to my calculations, your figures imply that Iraq's potential supply exceed total known reserves in the world by a factor of around 4x. Tell me where ny figures are wrong.

We are talking about whether or not the war is all about the economy of oil. I'd say that makes the value of oil under discussion relevant. If we can't come any closer than a factor of 25x then we our discussions won't mean a whole lot.

I intend to respond to other points you make, but I first want to get some kind of agreement about the value of the oil in question.

I could have gone with the Janet and john numbers that show Iraq with the second/third largest oil reserve in the world and my argument is still valid -- that Iraq is the only country where oil production could be quickly and cheaply increased by a significant enough quantity that, produced by the right people and sold to the right people under the right conditions would greatly benefit certain economys. But Iraq really does contain untold quantities of oil. The numbers from people who know what they're talking about show that Iraq could easily have more oil than the rest of the world put together*. It's certainly the largest single oil reserve in the world.
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OK mon, I read your post carefully. Duly noted about distilled wisdom of the ages, and comanies with a vested interest, and your horseshit about Janet and John. I guess my sources must not have a clue. You know, I'm starting to think you didn't look to closely at my numbers, if at all. You couldn't have looked too closely judging by the elapsed time between our posts. And if you won't give my posts due consideration, then I'm just wasting my time.

You're the guy who is so big on facts and evidence. You're the stats guy. You're the guy who started quoting the numbers. I would have preferred some kind of support to your claims, but ok we'll disregard claims about the actual value of the oil, and just say that it's "a lot". I'll go back to your big post of a day or two ago, and address some of your other points, sometime today.

I know one thing for sure, even if I take your figures at face value, your claim of 300x US GDP is off by a factor of 10, approximately.

The facts and the evidence say that Iraq has the only oil reserve capable of significant -- many millions barrels per day -- production increase. I'm well aware of your numbers, the numbers the media use to quantify Iraq's oil reserves and the numbers that the oil industry thinks Iraq has. Intimately aquainted with them, have been for years. I've forgotten more than most people know about oil and the Middle East due to my job and I also spend every day analysing hundreds of pages of quite complex financial data, so even if I'd worked out the numbers without having seen them before it honestly would take me only a fraction of the time you might think it would.

I'll just point out a couple of things about numbers from groups like the EIA. If you check their numbers going back a few decades you'll see huge increases in the estimated reserves of all major OPEC producers over a period starting in the eighties. This was when various changes were made to the OPEC quota system that allowed production based on known reserves. All OPEC countries suddenly discovered they had double the oil reserves that they'd previously had. The whole reserves thing is a big game of smoke and mirrors and for various reasons Iraq is possibly the only country thatdoesn't play them, or at least not to the same extent as others. Organisations like the EIA take these bs numbers at face value.

I'm willing to do that for the purpose of my argument too. Let's say that the EIA are right. Iraq is still the only country in the world with significant production upside. And do you know how valuable this is? Just look at Saudia Arabia. Over half of Saudi's 10+ million barrels per day (bpd) comes from one oilfield. And right now they're having to pump ten million barrels per day bpd of seawater into the field to maintain pressure, a sign that the field's production is going to start dropping soon. Over 75% of the region's oilfields areover 50 years old which means they're all going to move out of peak production to a more mature, slow level of production over the next decade or two. And this region holds over half the world's oil. The Saudis claim that they can maintain and increase production but their most recent big investment is to apply billions of dollars of new technology to a field that was exhausted just after WW2. If they've got so much easily recoverabl oil, why bother with expensively producing high sulphur stuff that the market is already well supplied with? The future guarantee of oil supplies for western economys at even current levels is shaky to say the least.

There's a good reason why Iraq's oilfields were topic number one of the last president's US National Security Council.