Simmons Projects Oil Price of $200 to $250 per Barrel

4 January 2006

Dangerous weapon. Source: Capital.

Matthew Simmons, founder of the energy investment bank Simmons & Co and former energy adviser to President Bush, is projecting oil prices of between $200 to $250 a barrel in the coming years.

In an interview with Germany’s Capital economics magazine, Simmons, who has become one of the most vocal business figures on the issue of peak oil production, adduces the ongoing low levels of new discovery and ever-increasing demand as indicators of the coming crunch.

Furthermore, as he outlined in his book Twilight in the Desert, Simmons concludes that the Saudi oil reserves—which are absolutely essential to any scenarios of fulfilling demand—are overstated and may themselves already have peaked.

Once Saudi oil peaks, according to Simmons, the world will pass sustained peak oil.

Simmons suggested in the interview that daily global oil production might drop to 65 million barrels per day by 2012. Currently the world is consuming about 85 million barrels per day.

Resources:

• Matthew Simmons speeches and papers