STRANGELY BAKHTIARI IS SILENT ON IRANIAN OIL RESERVES --- "Bigger than Saudi -- says BP"

Global oil output at a peak, ‘set to fall’: "SYDNEY: World oil production is at its peak and


set to fall 32% by 2020 as discoveries wane, said Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, a former executive of Iran�s state oil company.
World production is now about 81mn bpd, about 3.8mn less than the International Energy Agency�s estimate for the first quarter, Bakhtiari, who publishes papers and lectures on the theory that global oil production is on the verge of imminent decline, said yesterday in Sydney.
Oil prices that have risen almost threefold in three years to an all-time high of $75.78 a barrel in New York on July 7 haven�t reduced demand significantly, Bakhtiari said, predicting further gains beyond $100.
�We don�t know how far the price has to go for demand to begin to be dented; the normal economics don�t work any more,�� Bakhtiari said at a lecture in Sydney, hosted by the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. �Is it $125, is it $150? I don�t know. I don�t think it can go much higher than $300.��
So-called �peak oil�� theorists argue that world oil supplies are running out faster than some analysts have estimated. Matthew Simmons, chairman of energy investment bank Simmons & Co, wrote in his book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy that output from Saudi fields is about to decline because water injection has damaged reservoirs.
�I can see the peak very easily,�� Bakhtiari said. �In the short-term future production can only decline. It will not go up again because there�s faster depletion in all these fields than new fields coming on stream.��
Bakhtiari, a guest in Australia of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil"