Doug Ross @ Journal

World's second largest oil field running dry?

I have no idea as to its reliability, but AMEinfo (a Middle East Finance and Econonmy website) is reporting that Kuwait's biggest oil-field is beginning to run out of oil. If true, the world's second largest field, may be a discomiting reminder of Hubbert's "Peak Oil".

The peak output of the Burgan oil field will now be around 1.7 million barrels per day, and not the two million barrels per day forecast for the rest of the field's 30 to 40 years of life, Chairman Farouk Al Zanki told Bloomberg. He said that engineers had tried to maintain 1.9 million barrels per day but that 1.7 million is the optimum rate... ...it is surely a landmark moment when the world's second largest oil field begins to run dry. For Burgan has been pumping oil for almost 60 years and accounts for more than half of Kuwait's proven oil reserves. This is also not what forecasters are currently assuming.

That 'ruh roh' sound you just heard is the collective exhale from a hundred thousand Hummer owners.

In the meantime, the Alaska drilling initiative known as ANWR remains in limbo due to some GOP turncoats. Courtesy Hugh Hewitt, four GOP Representatives who are reported anti-ANWR and pro-Saudi-dependence... and who are vulnerable in next year's election cycle: Gerlach, Reichert, Shays, and Simmons.

If you assume ANWR is the size of a football field, then the area affected by drilling is a postage stamp-sized region. Charles Krauthammer observes:

For decades we've been dithering over drilling in a tiny part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Look, I too love the caribou. They are sweet, picturesque and reputedly harmless. But dire predictions about the devastation that Prudhoe Bay oil development would visit upon the caribou proved false. They have thrived... Let's get serious. We live at the edge of oil shortages and in perpetual vulnerability to oil blackmail. We have soldiers dying in the oil fields of the Middle East, yet we leave untouched the largest untapped oil field in North America so that Lower-48ers can enjoy an image of pristine Arctic purity. This is an indulgence bordering on decadence... The same logic applies to refineries. We have not built a new one since 1976. Gasoline doesn't grow on trees. The U.S. refining industry operates at 96 percent capacity. That is unsustainable... With these simple steps, we could within a decade finally escape the oil noose. But don't hold your breath. The Senate just loved its little oil-executive inquisition. The House Wednesday night stripped out the ANWR drilling provision. And there is not a single national politician who dares propose raising gas taxes by even a penny. We are criminally unserious about energy independence and we will pay the price.

For lack of a better word: indeed.