Dr. Sadad Ibrahim Al-Husseini Former Executive Vice President for Exploration and Production, Saudi Aramco Founder and President of Husseini Energy Co. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia   - Rising oil demand has no sustainable supply-side solution. The limit of what can be delivered economically is 73–74 million barrels out of a total liquids production of 90 million barrels. Ultimately, supplies of low cost oil have reached a plateau and oil output will decline within the decade. Competition for secure reserves will dominate global energy markets in the future.

Global oil supply situation could be summarized as following:
- Major increases in oil supplies are no longer achievable. The proven oil base is diminishing. The decline of existing capacity is accelerating. The cost of new capacity is increasing exponentially.

- Oil reserve estimates are not reliable — they are overstated by more than 30 percent. We are discovering about 14 billion barrels per year on average, and consuming 29 billion barrels. Replacement oil is also of lower quality. Additionally, recovery of many new reserves is not affordable. We are not going to replace the 630 billion barrels we have consumed over the past 30 years.

- The production capacity of oilfields follows a pattern of increase, plateau, and irreversible decline. The only way to counteract these declines is to find new fields. However, new projects are costly and slow to execute. Capital costs are higher than they once were (by a factor of ten). Non conventional oil projects are even more costly and even slower to execute.

- There are not enough projects on-stream to replace declining capacity over the next few years. Using spare capacity and best-case new Iraqi output, problems can be pushed back to the middle of the decade. However, this does not account for demand growth.

- Deep water projects in West Africa, Brazil, and elsewhere face technical problems for which solutions are still awaited. Russia is not planning further production increases beyond 10 mbpd. A field-by-field analysis suggests Iraq will underperform relative to expectations and requires 7–8 years to complete its expansion program, at best.

- Prodution beyond 27 mbpd is not sustainable in the Middle East owing to reserve depletion. Producers in the region should consider whether it is worth producing at a slower rate to conserve their reserves.