By 2030 Saudi Arabia may run out of oil. But don’t take my word for it. In June, Abdel Salam al-Yamani, public relations chieftain of the Saudi Electricity Company (yes, it is really referred to as the SEC in Saudi press releases), indicated as much. And well before this past summer, WikiLeaks unveiled some troubling US cables that reported conversations with Sadad al-Husseini, a top Saudi geologist who used to head oil exploration for Aramco, the Saudi oil monopoly. As it turns out, the kingdom may have overstated its oil reserves by 300 billion barrels.

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That would be about 40 percent.

Now there are about 300 billion reasons why the Saudi kingdom may not wish to dwell on the challenges posed by its rapidly diminishing resources. Most notably, during this touchy Arab era of alleged springtime, Saudis themselves use up about 3 billion barrels a day domestically—and no one in authority wants to deprive addicted nationals of their daily fix. Deprivation can and does lead to rumination, examination, and provocation, and I’ll give you three guesses as to why Saudi monarchs would prefer their subjects’ senses permanently dulled. “Demand for electricity is expected to grow 10 percent a year over the next decade, as a result of population and economic growth,” a 2010 cable revealed.

In other words, the Saudis are even more gluttonous than Americans. And they are facing what one US cable captured by WikiLeaks calls “a steady output in decline [which] no amount of effort will be able to stop.”

Now comes word, as reported by Monday’s Wall Street Journal, that Aramco’s chief executive, Khalid Al Falih, is renouncing previously outlined plans to raise its oil output to 15 million barrels a day. Falih gives all sorts of reasons for this turnabout: so many reasons, you might say, that it is hard to find any of them entirely credible, either individually or in the aggregate.

“You’ve got too many announcements about massive capacity expansions coming out of countries like Brazil, coming out of countries like Iraq,” he says. “The market demand is addressed by others.” (Note to Falih: In May, the Forbes blog “BRIC Breaker” reported that Brazil’s oil exports to the US were in decline. By 10 percent, actually. In fact, Brazil is importing oil right now, due to supply constraints.)

Another Falih remark: “Our objective is not to grow our production for the sake of growing our production, but to be there for the market if the market needs it.”

Well … yes. And we could also add that Saudi oil output was ramped up earlier this year when Libyan output was lost. And now that oil prices have fallen since 2008, those scary (but instructive) old days when oil was $147 a barrel, some slice of the potential crisis has been averted. At least for the time being.

But if you think the real reason Saudi Arabia is backing off on its solemn 2008 promise to raise production capacity to 15 million barrels a day is because the world’s oil needs are “being addressed by others,” then I have a bottled genie I’d like to sell you. Saudi Arabia is kind of the George Hamilton of nations—oil, heat, sunglasses, and all: It would just love to be the only country that could satisfy the world’s passions. That would put it in—how shall I phrase this?—the kind of absolutist, monarchial position it is used to. It does not like to share amours.

What does this mean for the rest of us?

It means ding-dong, the desert kingdom is dead.

Or as good as …