EX-ARCO <ARC> CHIEF SEES ENERGY CRISIS BY 1990
Dwindling global crude oil reserves and
the lack of any major new discoveries in recent years will send
the world into an energy crisis by 1990, the former Atlantic
Richfield Co chairman Robert O. Anderson said.
    "It's going to come sooner than anyone thinks," Anderson
told reporters after addressing a Houston business lunch. "I
believe we're going to see a change in the world oil markets in
two to three years because oil is becoming harder to find."
    Anderson, who retired from Arco last year to form Hondo Oil
and Gas Co, said world oil consumption is approaching 60 mln
barrels a day but a current excess capacity cushion of about
4.5 mln barrels a day will rapidly disappear.
    "If you looked around the world, you could not scrape up
one mln barrels a day in shut-in production outside the Middle
East," he said. "We're soon going to be right back where we
were in 1973 and 1979."
    Anderson predicted that world oil prices would end 1987 at
about 24 dlrs a barrel and continue a gradual climb.
    "There's no way prices can stay flat because there isn't
enough supply," he said. "There have been no major oil
discoveries for the past 15 to 20 years."
    Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oil reserves, the last major world
discovery, has already produced about five billion barrels of
oil or more than half of its estimated reserves, he said.
 Reuter
