Saudi Arabia Is Probably Lying About Their Oil Reserves

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I ride a Mercedes, my son rides a Land Rover, and my grandson is going to ride a Land Rover…but my great-grandson is going to have to ride a camel again." - Sheikh Rashid, founder of Dubai.

Since my childhood, "Saudi/World oil is going to be depleted in X years" was a common theme. I started to ignore such discussion 10 years ago.

I worked for Aramco in the 80's. We forecast 30 years of production. Saudi has pumped all the reserves we knew about. We had horizontal and precision drilling but we didn't have fracking (we did use steam and water but I wasn't involved) and we had a reservoir management system running on a mainframe. My belief is that Aramco would only sell shares if they believe that the reserves are running out.

I was around in the 70s when the experts said Saudi oil would run out by the end of the decade

OPEC had rules saying the amount each member could sell would be based upon the proven reserves. Saudi wanted to sell more oil so it had to "prove" it had a lot more oil in reserve but they also decided it would be a national secret. That is why the amount suddenly went up.

Since the 80s technology has changed that allows oil to be recovered that was not accounted as recoverable oil reserves. The Oil Sands in Canada have well over 1 trillion barrels of oil but oly 150 billion barrels are able to be recourved.

It's important to understand that estimates of recoverable oil are based on the technology available at the time. Over the past 15-20 years, horizontal drilling, precision drilling and fracking have allowed for the recovery of far more oil and gas than what was available prior to 2005. Fracking is not possible nor worthwhile in every location, either.

Not true I work as a geologist at Saudi Aramco. In the past decade we found so many new fields with huge reserves. In hafuf or even near Qassim. From 2019 we were asked to stop searching for new onse For political reasons. Final word : Saudi Arabia is a big country there are oil where ever we drill. I wish we had th same in my country

Due to how some forms of renewable energy aren’t always reliable (such as not always having enough sunlight for solar panels or enough wind for turbines), and how nuclear energy has become a lot safer over the years, nuclear power plants might be a better way to go than renewable, at least for a sizable portion of the energy market.

Oil in the ground does not suddenly run out, like a bottle would. As an oil well nears depletion, its output peaks and starts declining. This is also true for the output in an oil field, and generally for a nation as well. These are all reversible with improved technology - USA output peaked in the 70s, before recovering due to fracking. The fact that SA keeps their output stable suggests they are not yet peaked. Even if they peak tomorrow, or we see that they actually peaked a few years ago and managed to cover it up, this still means they have many decades of lower output.

I would recommend getting your peer review your video with a petroleum engineer. While It is difficult to know the trust level of Saudi's published reserves, the logic and reasoning in this video are full of flow and naive.

Some things I didn't see you touch on include technology advancing, and the political climate behind the oil production of Saudi Arabia. Part of the jump may be due to a new method of extraction or refinement, with less consideration of the environmental consequences of the extraction methods, meaning they can draw the wells more deeply than they were able to in the early days. There is also pressures by OPEC and other agencies as well. I would only assume that the oil extraction and processing technology has only advanced, possibly at a faster rate than is allowed to elsewhere.

In the early years of the oil industry, recovery of 5% was considered the rule of thumb. But over the years, as technology advances, recovery rate improved to 15%, to 30% and now with enhanced oil recovery, it could reach up to 50%.

While I think SA is lying about their oil reserves, I also don't believe they will expire within the next 20 years.

25% of the exportable oil comes from SA and another 25% comes from Russia. Another interesting fact, in the last 22 years half the oil ever produced was consumed. It would appear we are reaching the end of exponential growth and have a math problem, "you cannot have continued growth in population and you can't have continued growth in the consumption of resources."

Venezuela's oil is "Heavy" to "Extra Heavy Crude." This makes it difficult slurp up from the ground. It is also high in Sulphur i.e. "Sour." The raw crude also has to be blended with lighter oils to facilitate processing. A refinery has to be modified to handle this so the market for this is actually a bit restricted.

Saudi Arabia oil reserves were confirmed by an independent US based third party Gaffney, Cline and Associates, part of Baker Hughes and Dallas-based DeGolyer and MacNaughton. This was done ahead of the Aramco IPO, the figure was actually higher than what Aramco reported before (265 B). So please check your sources before you start making baseless videos. Also this figures is only based on conventional extraction methods, use of unconventional resources will extract more oil. It is amazing how many ignorant YouTubers are spewing lies in the internet

There was a forum called “The Oil Drum” . There was one post about Saudi oil where one person was discussing this, and in particular why all the wells are on one side, and some are already sucking water. BTW, the well is balanced with clean water to maintain pressure.

Yes I agree with Disposabull I remember as a kid during the formation of OPEC that the status of each country was based on their oil reserves. I think UAE also had a bit of a jump in reserves to also increase their position at the table.

The late Matt Simmons wrote a book about this in the early 2000s called Twilight in the Desert. He took whatever publicly available data he could find to make the argument that SA was on it's way down in oil production soon. I wonder what he would say if he were still around.