Matthew Simmons

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Matthew Simmons.

Matthew R. Simmons, chairman and CEO of Simmons & Company International, is a prominent oil-industry insider and one of the world's leading experts on the topic of Peak Oil. In his previous capacity, he served as energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush. Simmons is the author of the book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.

In his book, Simmons argues that production from Saudi Arabia, and especially from Ghawar, the world's largest oil field, will peak in the near future, if it has not done so already. Simmons bases his case on hundreds of internal documents from Saudi Aramco, professional journals, and other authoritative sources. However, Saudi Aramco officials, such as Nansen Saleri, contend that Saudi Arabia is fully capable not only of keeping up current production, but of expanding it significantly, even though it had not done so by mid-2006 despite near-record oil prices. Others have claimed that Simmons lacks the type of training that would allow him to read oil industry technical reports. In short, opinions vary as to the correctness of the interpretations of data and engineering concepts he used to extrapolate his estimates of remaining reserves, with many independent experts, such as Colin Campbell, Kenneth Deffeyes, and even some oil companies [1] agreeing with Simmons, while many in the USGS and the Saudi government dispute his views.

In August 2005, Simmons bet John Tierney and Rita Simon, the widow of Julian Simon, $2500 each that the price of oil averaged over the entire calendar year of 2010 will be at least $200 per barrel (in 2005 dollars). ^[1]