Re: Oil Pipeline ( was Tolerance strategies)

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Oct 25 2001 - 22:28:50 MDT


Brian wrote:

> you've got a stash of oil there perhaps bigger than is under
> Saudi Arabia, and you've got those young needy former Soviet
> republics that desperately want cash.

I believe that is overstating the situation by quite a bit.
According to the DOE EIA country analysis brief (based on
Russian estimates), Afghanistan's oil reserves stand at
~95 million barrels. That isn't worth sneezing at.

The total proven oil reserves for the entire Caspian Sea region
are 17-34 billion barrels (comparable to the U.S. (22 BB) or
the North Sea (17 BB). Estimates of "potential" reserves
range from 70-200 BB, these are fairly uncertain (see the Rand
report below).

So Afghanistan is a drop in the bucket and the entire central
Asian region, while nothing to sneeze at is dwarfed by Saudi
Arabia (> 250 BB) and Iraq (> 100 BB).

According to the BBC article (below), oil reserves are:
 Saudi Arabia: 260 BB
 Iraq: 110 BB
 UAE: 95 BB
 Kuwait: 95 BB
 Iran: 92 BB
 Venezuela: 66 BB
 Russia: 49 BB
 Mexico: 27 BB
 China: 24 BB
 U.S.A.: 23 BB
 Kazakhstan: 14 BB
 Norway: 10 BB

So it is going to take a *lot* of discovery in the Central Asia
region to balance off Middle East reserves/supplies.

Robert

Sources:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/hot.html
  (this discusses problems of getting oil out of central Asia).
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/nonopec.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/pgulf.html
http://www.cnie.org/nle/eng-72.html
http://www.oilsurvey.com/news/opec.htm
http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1074/mr1074.chap6.pdf
http://www.arabia.com/iraq/business/article/english/0,5508,60043,00.html
http://www.heritage.org/library/execmemo/em663.html
http://www.peacemagazine.org/9805/oil-jb.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_677000/677610.stm



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