The Oil Drum | Where Supply Increases Come From

60 comments on Where Supply Increases Come From

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SaturnV on October 4, 2005 - 2:53am

BP collects data from various oil producing countries without validating them. It therefore relies on the truthfulness of reserve data as reported by their governments. So how we are supposed to feel confident about the information in this graph?

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Stuart Staniford on October 4, 2005 - 3:08am

There's no reserve data here, only production data. However, the BP data is mildly (order 5%) inconsistent with other data sources, and none of it is probably altogether reliable: some of the reporters have incentives to cheat. However, it's probably not as badly wrong as reserves data, since at least production can also get counted when it arrives in consumer countries.

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SaturnV on October 4, 2005 - 4:03am

Hi Stuart,

But how do we know that the figure's supplied to BP aren't also qouating some element of past production? After this appears to have happened in the 2004 review with around 300 billion barrels of OPEC oil being over-reported because past production had also been added to the equation.

It appears that SA (Saudi Arabian) production has now plateaued which is the reason we are seeing such a huge effort on their part to secure new equipment in order to drill more wells using teriary recovery methods, especially in ghawar, to shore up falling production and keep up appearances. What this does to overall depletion rate only time will tell, although it probably won't be a pretty picture.

I can't comment on Russia which will retain much geopolitical strength far into the future by virtue of her reserves, but I also wager that it cannot replace SA as swing producer, which means as SA peaks so does the world.

Regards,

SaturnV

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