Neil King in Washington, D.C. reports:

Both Nansen Saleri, former chief of reservoir management at Saudi Aramco, and Houston-based investment banker Matthew Simmons are feeling good these days about the famous–and weighty–debate they held four years ago at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Are Saudi Arabia’s massive oil fields in great shape—or falling apart? Can Saudi Aramco help slake the globe’s soaring energy thirst far into the century—or has that ability already peaked?

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Matthew Simmons

Simmons, in his book “Twilight in the Desert” argued that several big Saudi fields, including the massive Ghawar field, were showing signs of serious strain. Their debate before a packed house at CSIS marked an unprecedented moment of openness for the secretive Aramco.

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Nansen Saleri

Saleri now says in an interview that time has proven Aramco right. Simmons “was saying four years ago that Ghawar was going to collapse and that Saudi Aramco was going to go into decline….[But] that precipitous decline never occurred,” he says.

Saleri, who left Aramco last year to create his own Houston-based reservoir-management company, insists Ghawar will keep pumping five million barrels a day far into the future. Aramco also managed to revive some other behemoths, like Abqaiq.

“Abqaiq became a renaissance story for Aramco,” he says, insisting that the field’s pressure remains strong and its water content is going down even after more than 60 years in production. Abqaiq “is doing fantastically,” Saleri says.

Simmons, reached by phone in Houston, says he feels equally vindicated—and increasingly alarmed. He based his book largely on information dug up in old technical journals. In recent weeks he has hit the archives again, with thoughts of writing a second book.

What he has found, he says, “is so unbelievably scary you can’t believe it.” He claims that there is mounting technical evidence that Aramco is struggling to deal with increasing volumes of water at its hugest fields. With water production going up, he says, oil production is going down.

“It is absolutely clear as a bell now that all of those fields are heading toward being another Cantarell,” referring to the massive Mexican offshore field, which is now in rapid decline.

So how different are the world views of Simmons and Saleri?

Saleri says he’s convinced technology will help revive aging reservoirs all over the globe, and world oil production won’t hit peak until well after 2050.

Simmons believes we may already have hit that peak. After his recent studies, he now fears he has “grossly underestimated how savage the post-peak oil reality will be.”