Quote:
Originally Posted by Leeman4Gilmour
It's tough to find current info on Ghawar, but my personal conspiracy theory (maybe others have predicted this but I haven't seen it) is that the Saudi's are driving the price down enabling them to scoop up cheap reserves from failing companies in other parts of the world to replace the inevitability of Ghawar declining dramatically. Then, once complete, they announce Ghawar can't maintain it's 5MMbbl/day pace. We instantly go from oil surplus to deficit, the price of oil sky rockets, and they're set. I haven't been able to find evidence of this yet though  . |
Their actions seem to suggest they think they'll have trouble selling the crude they can produce. They just broke up their Motiva joint venture with Shell, and kept the largest refinery from it instead of the higher margin chemicals business. Apparently they tried to buy the other refineries as well but Shell wouldn't sell. That suggests to me they're worried about finding a home for the crude they'll produce, not that they're trying to buy cheap barrels.