Mr. Gabrielli, the CEO of Petrobras, gave a presentation in December 2009 in which he shows world oil capacity, including biofuels, peaking in 2010 due to oil capacity additions from new projects being unable to offset world oil decline rates.
Gabrielli states in his presentation that the world needs oil volumes the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every two years to offset future world oil decline rates.
This is a stronger statement than the one he gave in January 2009 in an interview with Business Week when he said the following: “According to the company’s projections, production from existing fields will fall from a little over 80 million barrels a day to maybe half of that even if new techniques are used to slow their rate of decline. So just keeping global production flat is going to require lots of new fields and requires the world to replace one Saudi Arabia per three years.”
Gabrielli is clearly concerned about declining future world oil production. His statements are now in alignment with those of other oil company executives including Sadad al-Husseini, former Aramco executive, who states that world oil production is on a peak plateau, and Total’s CEO, Christophe de Margerie who doesn’t see global oil production ever exceeding 89 million barrels per day (Mb/d). World oil production in December 2009 was only slightly lower at 86 mbd.
Read more: The Oil Drum