Saudi Oil Production Peaked?

From Econbrowser some interesting numbers on Saudi Oil production, which are nicely summarized below:



The drop in oil production comes at a time when the oil price continues to stay at high levels of $55-75. Is Saudi Arabia simply restricting supply to support the high oil price? James Hamilton raises another possibility:

The second and more natural interpretation is even more disturbing: the mighty Ghawar oil field is already in decline, and the Saudis don't want anyone to know.

The mystic Ghawar oil field is the largest oil field in the world. Any estimation of future oil supplies is based on continued high supply from this one field.

But one commenter to the article, Hal, calms with his believe in the all-knowing market:

One typical argument against this kind of thing is that if this were true, so many people would know about it that many of them would want to take advantage of this inside information by betting on oil price increases. It would be an almost risk-free way to make incredible fortunes. But this trading activity would itself move the price up. If well-placed insiders knew that there was a major crisis coming, we should see substantially higher prices than we do.