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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

From:
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article315546.ece

Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer, and Exxon Mobil, the largest oil 
company, yesterday declared that the world had decades' worth of oil to 
come, in an attempt to calm fears about the record prices experienced in 
recent weeks.

Forming a powerful alliance, the Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said, at 
an industry conference in Johannesburg, that the country would soon almost 
double its "proven" reserve base, while Exxon's president, Rex Tillerson, 
spoke of 3 trillion or more barrels of oil that are yet to be recovered.

Mr Naimi said that Saudi Arabia would "soon" add 200 billion barrels to its 
current reserves estimate of 264 billion barrels. The level of the 
kingdom's reserves and future production capacity are a controversial 
issue, with sceptics suggesting that it is running out of oil. Muhammed-Ali 
Zainy, of London's Centre for Global Energy Studies, said: "Since these 
Opec countries [like Saudi Arabia] are closed, the only information 
available is available to themselves alone. So they can come up with a new 
reserves figure and the rest of the world will just have to take it."

Mr Naimi also said that there were "no takers" for more oil right now, as a 
result of constrained refining capacity. Roughly a quarter of US refining 
capacity is still shut after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the 
country's southern coast, but global refining capacity - to turn crude oil 
into petrol and other products - was struggling to keep up with demand even 
before that.

"Give us the customers and we will pump more oil," the Saudi oil minister 
told reporters at the 18th World Petroleum Congress, adding that more 
refineries needed to be built. He said that enough global output would be 
added in the next three to four years to restore "some margin of safety" to 
oil markets.

The comments did have a soothing impact on the market. Despite early 
reports that Rita has sunk several rigs and left at least nine others 
adrift in the Gulf of Mexico, crude oil slipped 75 cents to end at $65.07 
in New York yesterday. US petrol prices, however, continued to rise, 
leading George Bush to call on Americans to conserve fuel.

[I'm certain someone will correct me if wrong, but only since Rita have I 
heard GWB use the word "conserve." I didn't think it was in his vocabulary.]