Tuesday, November 20, 2012
A Different Spin
The IEA published an annual report recently that projects that the United States will overtake Saudi Arabia by 2020 in production of oil and become a net exporter by 2030. There has been a lot of commentary on this, one side saying that this disproves peak oil and we can continue merrily along, the other saying these projections are wishful thinking. I can foresee a quite probable scenario where the US surpasses Saudi Arabia as the latter's oil wells start pumping out water on the steep edge of the decline, and the US becomes a net exporter of oil because the dollar is no longer the reserve currency for the world and we need to sell oil for hard currency and can't afford to use the oil ourselves.
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I haven't looked at the report that closely because an almost 20 year projection that requires via extrapolation of short term trends is interesting but by necessity likely to have external inputs that throw off the projections. The biggest problem the Saudi's face are likely social ones.
ReplyDeleteThe reports, as I recall, also seemed to concede the point that oil in general was going to be more expensive to aquire. That almost conceded at least a plateau, if not a peak.