Matthew Simmons the author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy was interviewed by Jim Puplava of financialsense.com this week.
Matt Simmons is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Simmons & Company International, a Houston-based investment bank that specializes in the energy industry. Mr Simmons serves on the boards of Brown-Forman Corporation, The Atlantic Council of The United States, he’s also a member of the National Petroleum Council and The Council of Foreign Relations. He has an MBA from Harvard University.
Here is one of the most interesting sections of the interview:
MATT: In 1990 the United States was still producing 7.3 million bpd of crude oil, today it’s 5.1; the 7.3 was after a drop over the previous 5 years of 1.6 million bpd; our refineries only needed to run at 13 ½ million bpd; and we only needed to import 5.8 million bpd of crude oil imports to balance our system. Today we have to run our refineries at 100% or we have major product shocks; today, we have to import 10-11 million bpd, or we lose crude oil stocks; we have to basically create almost 3 million bpd of finished product imports; we have to run the system on a 24-7, all Summer long. And we still liquidate stocks.
So we have actually now created a pending domestic embargo, and we’re going to be lucky to get through the Summer without some periodic shortages. We probably will, but the odds are probably as high we will have some shortages, and then if we get through the Summer we have a fabulous respite from Labor Day to Thanksgiving, until we hunker to try to figure out how the world gets through the Winter of 2005 and 2006 because oil demand globally could easily go to 86-88 million bpd during the Winter, and that could easily exceed supply by 2-5 million bpd.
JIM: If that was to happen we would almost be looking at $75-80 oil, I suspect.
MATT: No, no, no. Oil prices could easily go up 5-10 times.
Listen to the interview at FinancialSense.com here.
Or read the transcript : Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.
