The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an intergovernmental entity made up of 26 first world states that operates within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The IEA releases a respected comprehensive annual report on the global oil market as well as monthly oil market reports that are relied upon by oil industry analysts for analyzing and forecasting the current and future crude oil supply and demand picture.
The March 2005 IEA monthly oil market report reported that the current maximum sustainable production by OPEC member states is on the order of 30.95 to 31.45 million barrels per day, depending upon the production capacity of Saudi Arabia, OPEC's largest producer. This is substantially unchanged from the figures in the June 2004 annual oil market report, which reported that total non-OPEC production for 1Q04 was 49.8 Mb/d.
After a year of sustained higher oil prices, total non-OPEC production has risen to 50.99 Mb/d. As would be expected, higher crude oil prices have led to a modest amount of increased production in some countries. However, the increase is mostly attributable to noneconomic factors such as the resolution of social unrest in the oil-producing areas of Nigeria and an increasing amount of the Iraqi oil that is being produced in spite of the ongoing resistance to the U.S. led occupation.
Despite this small increase in non-OPEC production, experts continue to believe that there is little spare production capacity outside of OPEC. The June 2004 annual oil market report commented upon the continuing decline of oil production in the United States:
US – April Alaska actual, others estimated: Substantial downward revisions have been made to US production following the release of data for December 2003 and provisional indications from weekly data through April. US crude production is now seen as having declined by 20 kb/d in 2003, with a further 95 kb/d fall expected for 2004. NGL output is seen reversing 2003’s 165 kb/d decline, rising by 120 kb/d. While April is thought to have seen crude and NGL supply rise by some 85 kb/d, this was from a markedly lower baseline than anticipated last month. Both NGL and US Gulf of Mexico (GOM) output now seem to be running at lower levels. This suggests that the build-up in supplies from new fields in the GOM area in particular is proving slower than anticipated and also that decline rates for mature, base load production are higher.
The North Sea oilfields that are shared by Norway and the United Kingdom have been of great strategic importance in the past few decades because their production considerably diminished the ability of OPEC to exercise pricing power in the crude oil market. Unfortunately for the IEA member states, the North Sea oilfields have also been in decline for the past several years:
UK offshore production data for February again showed a decline, output being over 70 kb/d lower than had been estimated in last month’s Report. Forties system and NGL output again lagged expectations. An estimated rebound in March production is likely to have been followed by a 70 kb/d fall in April, with a similar reduction likely again this month as spring maintenance enters full swing. Indeed loading schedules for April and May have caused downward adjustments for supply in April/May compared to the last Report. Supply should temporarily rebound in July but dip again due to maintenance in August. However, the absence of detailed company maintenance schedules for the UK sector place a degree of uncertainty around the precise extent and duration of the likely seasonal dip in UK supply. Overall, UK output for 2004 has been revised down by 20 kb/d in light of early-year performance and also due to a slower build-up in production now expected from the new Clair field development west of Shetland from late-2004. Total UK production is now expected to fall by 130 kb/d in 2004, to average 2.16 mb/d, compared to the 215 kb/d drop evident in 2003.
The situation in the former Soviet Union shows little present spare capacity, but the potential for modest increases in export capacity in the future:
Limits to export capacity growth may prove less of a check on Russian crude production in the next three to four years than earlier seemed likely. Political, fiscal and financial uncertainties could still undermine production growth plans in the short term, but the list of pipeline and export terminal expansions planned through 2008 is considerable. If all reach fruition with associated pipeline and storage de-bottlenecking, export capacity could rise by [b]500 kb/d[/b] per year during 2004-2008.
Recent reports out of Russia have predicted that oil exports will continue at about present levels until about 2010, when production declines in combination with rising domestic consumption will begin to reduce the amount of crude oil that is available for export. The United States clearly recognizes the importance of future Russian exports to the global economy. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a recent television interview urged Russia to increase its oil production capacity:
What Russia can do is to adopt polices in its energy sector in terms of the development of its energy sector that will increase the supply of oil both in the short term and -- hopefully in the short term -- but most especially in the long term,'' she said in the interview.
In summary, the distant potential for non-OPEC production increases is not very promising. Increased and new production may be possible in some areas such as in Libya, coastal West Africa and the former Soviet Union, but much of this new production will be offset by the continual production declines of older fields elsewhere.
Total sustainable world oil production as reported in the March 2005 monthly oil market report is 82.44 Mb/d. Yet the IEA forecasts average monthly demand for calendar year 2005 to be 84.3 Mb/d. Considering the continual decline in production from mature production fields, there is no guarantee that aggregate world production capacity is going to increase much beyond this level. Again, production increases are possible in many oil producing countries, particularly in Iraq and the other OPEC mainstays, but a significant amount of this increased production can be expected to be offset by declines elsewhere.
Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes predicts that global oil production will peak in November 2005. Other analysts hesitate to predict a precise date for what has been termed "Peak Oil," but there is a growing consensus that this milestone event will occur sometime within the next five years. The disconnect between the predictions of experts such as Dr.Deffeyes and those of the United States Energy Information Agency (EIA, not to be confused with the IEA) is staggering. The EIA has published forecasts of global oil production and demand through the year 2025. In 2025, according to the EIA projections, world oil demand will be 117.86 Mb/d, an increase over present production capacity that is roughly equivalent to about four times the present production of Saudi Arabia. To say that many experts are skeptical of the feasability of these projections would be an understatement, considering that the discovery of large oilfields has slowed considerably in recent decades (see the chart illustrating how the major oil discoveries have been in decline for the past several decades) and the fact that every major oil company has been producing oil at a greater rate than it has been replenishing its reserves for the past decade.
The March 2005 IEA oil market report could not be more explicit:
The reality is that oil consumption has caught up with installed crude and refining capacity. Refiners are already competing to secure crude for the second quarter to rebuild depleted distillate stocks and to meet summer driving season and air conditioning demand. Capacity limitations are once more being tested by strong demand growth, keeping prices high. If supply continues to struggle to keep up, more policy attention may come to be directed at oil demand intensity in our economies and alternatives.
Is the present oil production crunch a temporary phenomenon that will be alleviated by increased production spurred by higher crude oil prices, or does it represent physical, geological limitations that will prevent a higher level of oil production regardless of the amount of investment that is made in the production infrastructure? Certainly, the failure of the major oil companies to discover significant additional reserves over the past decade is a sign for pessimism. The fact that the oil majors have been reluctant to invest in additional refinery capacity is also an indication that their expectation is that the future bottleneck will be represented by the supply picture, and not by the refineries. There has also been a recent spate of mergers among the major oil companies, with oil companies possessing attractive reserves such as Conoco being the favorite targets. It seems that many of the industry leaders see corporate acquistion as the most reliable means for booking additional reserves.
Of course, new oil production projects that are already in the planning and implementation stage will be affecting the overall supply picture over the next few years. Unfortunately, this additional production appears to be inadequate to accommodate the expected growth in consumption, particularly considering the growing appetite of the developing world, especially China and India, for crude oil. The EIA forecasts that the world will consume an average of 91.65 Mb/d in the year 2010. The Oil Depletion Analysis Center (ODAC) recently analysed all of the 68 ‘mega projects’ worldwide that are scheduled to begin production from 2004 through 2010. It concluded that these projects would add around 12.5 Mb/d of additional production worldwide by the turn of the decade. Unfortunately, at a minimum more than half of this estimated new supply would be required to simply replace production declines elsewhere due to natural depletion. If, according to recent reports, Saudi Arabia's supergiant Ghawar field will soon be in decline, the additional supply from the mega projects may be inadequate to maintain world oil production even at its current levels.
According to ODAC board member Chris Skrebowski, who is editor of the UK trade magazine Petroleum Review:
With most producers operating flat out to meet runaway demand increases this year, the world’s immediately available spare production capacity has virtually disappeared. This means that significant additional supplies in the near-to-medium term must come from new projects already in the development pipeline.
We now see those projects providing surprisingly limited relief in terms of incremental supply in coming years, and indeed physical shortages appear ever more likely if demand remains strong.......
Even with relatively low demand growth, our study indicates a seemingly unbridgeable supply-demand gap opening up after 2007.
The EIA long-range forecast foresees most of the additional production that is required to meet the 2025 goals as coming from the Persian Gulf region, mainly from Saudi Arabia, but with Iraq also making a substantial contribution. It predicts that Saudi production in the year 2025 will be about 22.5 Mb/d, as compared to its current production of about 9.5 Mb/d. Iraqi production is forecasted to rise to about 6.6 Mb/d, a sharp increase over the current sustainable production of about 2.8 Mb/d. Clearly, the geopolitical importance of these two countries will increase as global oil consumption is projected to rise and their output accounts for an ever greater percentage of the world export total. It is little wonder that the United States has committed itself to gaining political and military control of the region.
There are two significant questions that need to be addressed in regard to the massive increases in Saudi oil production that the United States desires and expects. The first question is whether the production increases are geologically and technologically possible. Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, an adviser to the Bush administration on energy issues, has been quite outspoken in his belief that the Saudi oil reserves are not the near bottomless resource that the United States and the Saudis themselves would like others to think. Simmons has recently argued that Saudi Arabia's oil fields now are in decline, and that its production capacity will not climb much higher than its current capacity of about 10 Mb/d. If he is correct, we will shortly have a global energy crisis on our hands the dimensions of which that could change the style and standard of living of billions of people around the world.
Assuming that the production increases forecasted by the EIA are feasible, the second important question is whether the major oil-producing nations will have adequate incentive to invest in the necessary infrastructure to make it happen. In pure economic terms oil-producing countries crude may feel that it is in their best interest to produce less oil at higher market prices so that their reserves will last for a longer period of time. This inherent conflict between the interests of the oil-producing nations and the OECD countries is bound to become a major geostrategic issue in the next several decades. Saudi Arabia has historically been compliant to US demands when it comes to energy policy, but other major producers such as Venezuela and Iran are presently hostile to US interests. It is likely that the US military presence in the Persian Gulf region will be maintained or even increased in the coming years, and that pressure will be put on the leaders of other major oil producing nations as well, as evidenced by the recent statement reported above by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with regard to Russian oil production.
Presently, oil production in many of the major producing countries is controlled by governmental interest or state oil companies. It is likely that the US will try to use its considerable influence to urge that responsibility for oil production and transportation be transferred away from national oil companies to multinational oil companies that are not under the direct political control of the oil-producing country. This is likely to become a significant future issue in the relationship of the United States with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela. Similar issues were involved in the seizure of the Yukos oil company by the Russian government. The United States would have preferred that Yukos control its oil-producing resources, since it is more susceptible to Western control than is the Russian government.
It is clear from the actions of the United States government over the past several years that future oil production is the single biggest issue driving foreign policy. I will continue to watch developments in this area closely.
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