Re: SC20

http://peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17691

When Mexico runs dry

Country's giant oil field is shrinking

Mexico's economy and government are living on borrowed time, and the day of reckoning may be coming sooner rather than later.

A third of the country's federal revenues come from the profits from government-run oil fields. A single field known as Cantarell provides most of the oil and the profits. While the exact condition of this field is a closely kept secret, news leaks and the limited published data suggest that Cantarell is quickly passing its pumping prime. Production in May was down 7 percent from just the beginning of the year, according to the Los Angeles Times. The demise of an oil field can be rather sudden. As one former Mexican oil executive told the Times, "Cantarell is going to fall a lot, and quickly."

The economic, political and social repercussions of the end of Cantarell would be devastating. That it is precisely why elected leaders tend to ignore it. Presidential candidates in the recent Mexican election avoided Cantarell and energy policy. On this side of the border, leaders focus on reforms with popular appeal such as tighter border security and tougher penalties for illegal immigrants.

Today's problems will pale compared to a future Mexico, now the world's fifth-largest oil producer, that hasn't prepared for life beyond Cantarell. The same goes for the future United States, which is the largest purchaser of oil from both Cantarell and Mexico..............

So lets see, Mexico's ( # 5 oil producer ) oil production is heading in to depletion, Venezula at number 4 world oil producer is taking definitive steps to stop selling oil to the US, Iraq with number 2 stated oil reserves is tetering on the brink of civil war, Saudi Arabia with stated number 1 world oil reserves is showing serious signs that it has lied about how much oil it really has, this US administration is actively pissing off most of the Arab world where in a relatively short time most of the remaining oil supplies will be left, China is going around the world buying up huge contracts with all those countries who don't so much like the US anymore, and our fearless leader has done his best to alienate Russian president Putin who's country has big oil, and huge natural gas supplies, etc, etc. And to think that it was not that many decades ago when the US was the number one producer of oil in the world, with the clout that went with that. Times they are a changin.