A leading analyst said Saudi Aramco, the world's largest state oil company, would fail to meet its production targets. Matthew Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Co International, raised the prospect that Aramco would fail to overcome dwindling reserves in the Saudi kingdom.

"I'm dubious they can hit their targets,'' Simmons told a Houston conference sponsored by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas last week. "If they had hit their targets, they would be more forthcoming.'' Simmons has argued that Saudi Arabia and other oil producers were withholding data while exaggerating their reserves. Aramco has pledged to increase Saudi oil output from 11.3 million to 12.5 million barrels of oil per day by 2009. In Washington, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Saudi Arabia could increase oil output to meet rising demand. Ms. Lagarde met Saudi officials during the annual meetings by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

AND.........

Experts worry that world oil production may soon peak

by Greg Flakus

Energy experts from around the world have gathered in Houston for a three-day conference on the issue of peak oil, which involves predictions that world oil production will soon reach its peak and then go into decline. This could cause a global economic crisis since demand for energy is not expected to slow, but, in fact, is expanding rapidly. VOA's Greg Flakus has more from Houston.

The proponents of the peak oil theory rely on data from existing oil fields around the world that show weakening production in many of the richest fields and increasing difficulty in extracting oil from newer fields. Oil companies, both national and private, tend to dismiss such concerns by citing the size of their reserves and the new technology that allows them to produce oil from areas that would have been bypassed a few decades ago.

With growing economies in USA, and only slightly weaker in Europe, and burgeoning growth in China, India and others, no picture needs to be drawn as individual families in democracies face a limit to what they can hope for in their lives because of dwindling resources, and complete economic dependence on oil. Every day we advance into this future brings us closer to the day when a majority SOMEWHERE will simply say....'we are compelled to go and TAKE IT'. Already we have the Russians sticking a flag into the arctic sea floor beneath the North Pole ice pack

The outcome to all this is SIMPLE to predict.
The USA is ill served by any other policy than a MANHATTAN PROJECT to divest in all oil related energy requirements, and invent our way into the future. If not, by default, we will have decided to engage in wars which will kill billions.