Let's state your proposition the other way around - a 3% shortfall in meeting demand caused a doubling in price. What will another 3% shortfall cause? And another? And another?

Also, you are nitpicking. It's still exponential growth. A 4% projected growth rate results in doubling of demand in 17.5 years. A 1.5% projected growth rate results in doubling of demand in 46 years. Do you seriously think petroleum production can grow to 170 million barrels per day by 2053?

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

"The 4% projected growth and 8 mbpd shortfall? Talk about selection bias."

Yeah, you see a lot of that type of nonsense. The problem is that it completely undercuts what is a serious problem. The fossil fuel crisis is real, but anyone with half a brain sees that type of stuff, shakes their head and turns away....move along, nothing to be seen here....

The same true of picking out these third world Diesel crisis situations and using them as some kind of evidence about the world geological oil situation.

Many of these countries have cartels that control Diesel, no home market refining of Diesel, and enough graft and corruption to bleed even a strong nation to death. How they do as well as they do is evidence of the power of human spirit and ingenuity. Half of these countries had blackout and brownout on an ongoing basis right through the '80's and 90's when fuel was givaway in the developed nations. We will leave aside the fact that many of these nations sit on the south Asian land mass or Africa, which EXPORTS oil and natural gas while the locals sit in the dark (there is a reason that developed nations went to natural gas for electric power production)

On and on the idiocy goes....as I sit writing this post, the local TV news in Louisville is interviewing people about the effect of the gasoline price....a restaurant owner is saying that he has had to raise prices due to the cost of food deliveries to his restaurant going up....."and sure, it's part of the run up in gasoline....", he says. (!!!) Are food delivery trucks back to running on gasoline now....?
(When I was in the auto service trade, we serviced food delivery trucks, tires oil changes etc., and everyone I was was running Diesel fuel)
Anytime you have a price move in anything, it goes with out saying that every grafter in the country will use it as an excuse to try to tack on and ride the coattails....they know that most Americans have no idea what kind of fuel is used in trucks, trains, barges, tractor trailers, and cargo aircraft....

and the band plays on.....

RC
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom

edit: Accidental double post-second one edited out!

Doubling the price of crude oil resulted in a 3% decrease in demand, how shocking!

that was the 3% that poorer countries couldn't afford...