Re: SC29

http://www.energybulletin.net/22213.html

An assessment of world oil exports

.........Conclusions

This assessment should be taken "with a grain of salt", it is not to be expected that the future will follow these projections. But looking at these numbers, some trends clearly arise, the most important being a decline from 2005 onwards of the amount of oil coming to the market. This situation is a consequence of consumption growth at higher pace than production in most of the oil exporting countries.

Once the amount oil available for export becomes lower than the amount required by the importing countries costs start to rise, forcing an abnormal wealth transfer from buyers to sellers. This newly acquired wealth will improve affluence in exporting countries, which in turn drives up internal consumption (better automobiles, better and farther away from center homes, more goods imports and transportation, etc). This feedback loop will perpetuate itself until some event or constraint tackles consumption growth in the exporters' side, or until the importers collapse from lack of new wealth to transfer. The former is the most likely scenario.

For oil importing countries like the EU these projections bring a worrisome conclusion: mitigation strategies for oil scarcity should have started taking effect in 2005. For this to have happened, planning should have started in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Although programs for liquid hydrocarbons replacement exist in the electric generation sector in the EU, US or Australia, none of these countries seems to have prepared to phase out oil in the transportation sector. In the case of the EU it is also important to note the failure in planning for an alternative to nuclear electric generation (an important energy source in some member states) since its stalling due to negative public opinion.

Finally another consequence must be observed: unfortunately, as laid down originally by Colin Campbell, the Oil Depletion Protocol may only function if exporting countries restrain their oil consumption. Up to the Peak Oil epoch the Protocol can work if exporting countries match their consumption growth with that of production, freezing the amount of oil coming on market. After Peak Oil these countries would have to decrease their internal consumption in order to mach the decline rate of world production with that of world consumption. It is hard to envision less wealthy countries reducing their consumption in order to provide oil to wealthier countries..................