[Arragonis]

The same guy in 2004 - this is not new.

So what of US government claims that Saudi will pump 22m bpd in 2025? "If, by some miracle, they find some huge fields that have defied discovery for 50 years," Simmons says, "it might happen. Then again, I could be living on the moon in 2025.

"I would say the probability of me living on the moon is higher than Saudi reaching 22m barrels."

Officially, the Saudis dismiss Simmons' analysis. "Matt is talking rubbish," oil minister Ali Al-Naimi has said. So when I went from Simmons' office to meet Sadad Al-Husseini, I expected him to trot out the same line.

After all, until March, Al-Husseini was head of exploration and production at Aramco, the state-owned oil monolith which accounts for 97 per cent of Saudi's crude output. Yet, astonishingly, Al-Husseini lent some credence to Simmons' views.

"The question isn't, can we can pump 15m or 20m barrels daily?" he says. "The question is, how long it can be sustained? We could only manage 22m bpd for a very short time - maybe 10 years. And that would mean an awful lot of depletion, which isn't in the best interests of the global economy."

What does Al-Husseini make of US estimates of future Saudi production? "These are US numbers, not ours," he says. "The American production outlook is much too high."

When I ask Al-Husseini where the EIA is going wrong, he echoes Simmons: "The EIA focuses only on demand. That is why they overestimate not only future Middle East supplies, but non-OPEC and Russian supplies too."

Source 'The West is deluded to rely on Saudi oil'

Oil is not just fuel though, its involved in everything we do in the modern world from the moment we are born to the moment we die - medicines, healthcare, constructions, manufacturing as well as the obvious ones like food, energy and transport.