LevinK
I like your hypothesis. It feels good. It's appealing in many ways. It fits much of what I know about how the world works.
Problem is without a serious prosecutorial investigation it's only a hunch. No way to verify. We may never know.
But I do trust the Oily One to keep on top of this.
I say this because you have been extremely correct about a bunch of things lately. I actually trust you. Which is a really scary concept we should probably not delve into at this point.

I don't even have any hunches. I just don't know. I presented data that was freely available. According to what I saw, there are no "missing barrels" - I mean within a certain believable margin of error. I just presented what I thought was a missing  "buffer of credibility." Clearly certain people never looked at the actual data. Those certain people will have to come forth and clear their names. Then they will have have to clear mine. I realize it will be painful. I can guarrantee the alternatives will be worse.

I think the missing barrels LevinK sees are because he failed to add in exported products, which are refined products. Add the 3 numbers together - internal consumption, exported crude, and exported products - and they come very close to the daily production. Any discrepancy is, as Oil CEO said, within a reasonable margin of error for those numbers.
I'm not at all sure what it is I've been correct about lately, but count me out on this one. I just like Levin's hunch.

I can pipe in that when you've got a big enough chart it is just not going to justify and balance in all directions and little errors will echo.
This looks like it could be bigger than that but...

The big commodities in world trade are guns, drugs, oil, and coffee. I don't even think the coffee numbers are always believable.