Saudi Arabia’s stated reserves are 258 billion barrels, but the International Energy Association’s monthly report for August 2004 said that there will be no new Saudi Light (a high-end crude oil that any refinery can process) for the next seven years and that existing oilfields are expected to decline by 27 percent from current production levels.

Saudi Arabia claims that it can increase oil production to satisfy increased demand, but the bank analyst says promises of increased production last year didn’t come to fruition. Saudi Aramco said last year that it would produce an extra 500,000 barrels of oil immediately and an extra five million barrels per day by 2012.

According to Saudi Aramco's statistics, existing Saudi oilfields deplete by 600,000 to 800,000 barrels per day each year. If such levels are maintained until 2012, total Saudi depletion will have reached a minimum of 4.2 million barrels per day.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest net oil exporter.

In 1980, worldwide oil consumption was 63 million barrels per day. By 2002, worldwide oil consumption was 78 million barrels per day. (http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table12.xls). That’s about a 24 percent increase, from approximately 23 billion barrels a year to over 28 billion barrels per year.

At the 2002 rate of consumption, the oil reserves on this graph will last 8,790 days, or about 24 years.

If worldwide oil consumption dropped a little more than 10 percent, to 25 billion barrels per year, the oil reserves on this chart would last about three-and-a-half years longer.

In order to make these reserves last 100 years, worldwide oil consumption would have to be cut to 6.87 billion barrels per year, about 25 percent of 2002 consumption levels. That’s less than the United States alone consumed in 2002.