"A recently declassified 1977 CIA study on Peak Oil in the Soviet Union is a telling indicator that Peak Oil issues have been of secret concern to policy makers in the US for a long time. Professor Richard Heinberg, author of the best-selling book "The Party's Over" describes what the CIA was looking at, and offers some insight as to why.
Professor Kjell Aleklett of the University of Uppsala in Sweden, who is the current President for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (www.peakoil.net) has shed light on the current phenomenon of large Russian oil exports by noting that the demise of the Soviet Union and Russian economic crashes of the mid-to-late 1990s effectively delayed Russia's peak for about ten years. This is the so-called "second peak" for Russia, which production graphs currently show.
What this also means is that while Russia is currently a major oil exporter, selling oil hand over fist, it will not be able to sustain either its economic recovery or its current production rates for more than a few more years. Russia's continued salvation and future economic clout will no doubt be based upon the fact that it possesses half of all the natural gas reserves on the planet. Current business and economic developments with Britain and Western Europe indicate that Europe, and especially Britain -- already experiencing severe gas shortages – are well aware of this reality."
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081503_cia_russ_summary.html
>From: "Chris Doss" <itschris13 at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: [lbo-talk] Saudi Arabia, eat Russia's dust!
>Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 05:26:48 -0500
>
>Barron's
>November 3, 2003
>OPEC, Count Your Kopeks
>Despite Yukos fracas, Russia outproduces Saudis
>By LEIA PARKER
>LEIA PARKER is an assistant news editor at Dow Jones Newswires.
>
>RUSSIA IS RECLAIMING ITS STATUS as the world's leading oil producer,
>leaving Western energy companies eager to tap its rich petroleum and gas
>reserves -- even as political wrangling fuels new concerns about legal
>protections.
>
>Russia produced 8.5 million barrels of oil a day in September, edging out
>Saudi Arabia's 8.47 million, according to provisional estimates from the
>International Energy Agency (IEA), a watchdog for the Organization for
>Economic Cooperation and Development. Each produced more than 10% of the
>global oil supply, although the Saudis export far more than Russia .
>
>The Russian Federation still faces challenges in developing a fully
>democratic, free-market system. That was underscored by the Oct. 25
>detention at gunpoint of Mikhail Khodorkovsky -- chief executive officer of
>OAO Yukos, Russia's largest oil company -- on fraud and tax-evasion
>charges. While some U.S. officials see the arrests of Khodorkovsky and a
>close associate as a narrow power struggle, others fear a broader campaign
>against the oligarchs who possess much of Russia's oil wealth.
>
>A Russian court Thursday froze 44% of Yukos' shares, apparently as
>collateral against any back taxes owed by those under investigation. The
>move stepped up the conflict, rendering any immediate purchase of a large
>stake in Yukos by a major foreign oil company unlikely and leading some
>foreign investors to fear that Russia might revisit the 1990s
>privatizations of its industries. (For more on this, see Review & Preview.)
>
>Those concerns, however, are unlikely to stanch the rapid growth of
>Russia's oil output, the resulting downward pressure on world petroleum
>prices, or the development of new U.S.-Russian energy alliances over the
>long term, according to U.S. officials and oil consultants.
>
>"Overall, I don't think it's going to have much impact on corporate tie-ups
>and investment in Russia ," says a U.S. Department of Energy official,
>reacting to Khodorkovsky's detention. "Some U.S. companies take a very
>conservative approach to investment, and may be a little gun-shy or play
>close to the vest before they're ready to jump into this fray, which I
>think is more political than anything else."
>
>Yukos and Lukoil, Russia's second-largest oil firm, want Western companies
>to buy equity stakes or form joint ventures, while Saudi Arabia remains
>closed to private oil investment. Exxon Mobil and ChevronTexaco reportedly
>have discussed buying a stake in Yukos, which recently merged with rival
>Sibneft.
>
>"So far, the great Russian resurgence as an oil power has come from
>restoration and redevelopment of existing fields," says David Goldwyn,
>president of the Goldwyn International Strategies consultancy in
>Washington, D.C., and former assistant secretary of energy for
>international affairs. "For Russia to be an oil power after 2010, they need
>a lot more investment in new fields, and they need foreign investment and
>capital to achieve that."
>
>In August, U.K. oil major BP completed the merger of its Russian assets
>with OAO Tyumen Oil to form TNK-BP.
>
>Among the risks complicating such investments, corruption within Russia
>remains perhaps the biggest, observed former president of the Soviet Union
>Mikhail Gorbachev at a Russian-investment conference in New York in
>October.
>
>Despite this and other problems, Russian oil output grew 11%, or 800,000
>barrels a day, in the first nine months of 2003. Leading Russian energy
>companies say they plan to continue raising output, even as Saudi Arabia
>pledges to trim its production after Nov. 1, in line with the Organization
>of Petroleum Exporting Countries' effort to keep prices high.
>
>The U.S. Energy Information Administration, the statistics arm of the
>Department of Energy, predicts that Russian output will continue recovering
>from its 1990s lows to reach 10.4 million barrels a day by 2025 -- 44%
>above 2001 levels.
>
>If Russia -- which has said OPEC is defending prices at too high a level --
>continues to resist the producer organization's requests to cooperate on
>output, Saudi Arabia could try to flush out Russia's relatively high-cost
>production by flooding the market with petroleum and letting prices fall.
>"The greatest threat to U.S. energy security over the next five to six
>years is not high prices that destabilize the U.S. economy; it's low prices
>that will hurl us further into dependence on OPEC and excessive,
>inefficient consumption of oil," Goldwyn warns.
>
>EIA economist David Correll plays down such concerns, saying that Russia's
>oil resurgence should instead foster stability in the energy market. "It
>puts more oil on the world markets, and that's something that's been in the
>interest of major consuming countries like the U.S. for a long time," he
>says.
>
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