Many people will tell you that the production rate of Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar oil field, which has yielded 5 million barrels of petroleum per day for decades, will never be surpassed. In fact, no other oil field has ever come close to topping the production rate of Ghawar, and up until recently I would have agreed its production would never be topped. But I am becoming more convinced that the Permian Basin could eventually give Ghawar a run for its money. That argument would have been laughable a decade ago, but there are three pieces of data…