There has been another Wikileaks release, exposing the US diplomatic channels as being aware of the possibility of Saudi overstatement of reserves and the possibility that future Saudi ‘swing production’ may be far more limited than believed.
Here’s how the Guardian UK put it:
The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.
The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom’s crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.
(Source)
It turns out that the source in these cables was none other than Sadad al-Husseini, who is a known quantity to us, as his name and views have appeared on this site numerous times over the years. There are no new claims exposed in these cables that we’ve not heard and analyzed before, so the interest we have is in the cables themselves and what they imply.
I was first exposed to Sadad al-Husseini’s believable and reasoned views in 2009 in a video interview shot by Steve Andrews and Dave Bowden of ASPO (transcript of that interview here). In that video Sadad al-Husseini articulated nearly identical concerns to those appearing in the cables. Here’s more from the developing story:
The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the Saudis and their Opec cartel partners would pump more oil if rising prices threatened to choke off demand.
by tim_p 
