I don’t believe the ELM can be taken to its final conclusion of exports drying up in economies where oil exports form a significant portion of GDP, far from it.

Chris,

If the net exports don't go to zero, what level do they go to? ( bearing in mind Return on Investment, Mercantilism, ELM, Nationalism, Privateering etc.)

Xeroid.

It is an exponential problem, and the motivation of the sellers must be considered. If the OPEC cuts outputs below demand, then price will rise exponentially. The determinant of how much they then sell would be how much money they want, and how well they cooperate with each other. So far, they tend to cut each others' throats at the drop of a barrel and lie about their reserve numbers in order to ship more oil for more money. If they figure out that cooperation and limiting supplies can produce more money for a longer time than they ever dreamed before, then perhaps they will figure out some fixed quotas which keep just enough oil flowing to maintain the price/volume points. This is the rub, since if they go too far, they invite military action (shown to fail already, but still could be used as punishment incentive), if they cut too little, they risk running out of a future.
In past years, OPEC has been cognizant of the risk of alternative fuel incentives, but now that we see how futile that option is (in terms of volume), we also see that the oil production is going to decline much faster than alternatives can come on line. This means that the consuming countries will go into recession, and be unable to pay the prices which they could have in the past, which makes military action more probable.
Stress makes people collectively suicidal. Not a good situation. Anyone got another planet we can move to?
Didn't think so.

Unlike the UK and some others, many of the big exporters - Saudi Arabia especially comes to mind - have essentially no economy beyond oil and oil processing. As the rationing in Iran already suggests, one way or another they will do what they must to sustain some exports as they have nothing else to fall back upon. So it will be a while before Jeffrey Brown's curves actually cross over globally and the worldwide export market disappears.

But as to predicting the exact quantity of net exports, and the role of long term contracts vs. the spot market, there is simply no telling. Such things will follow from political decisions, which are capricious, arbitrary, and often irrational. Which is why are discussing it at all: it is a concern, just maybe less of a concern than the Mad Max Doomers would have us believe.

In any case, one reasonable side bet is that when forgoing coal becomes a matter of freezing in winter - rather than, as now, a matter of spitefully sticking it to evil wicked Big Business and sentimentally whining over useless, dangerous, brutish polar bears, it is unlikely that coal will continue to be forgone.

The ELM focuses on the portion of oil that is exported - that's the interesting bit because it's what we in oil importing countries care about. Saudi production that's burnt in Saudi cars is of little consequence to the world. The ELM evaluates the impact of indigenous production (typically decline) and consumption (typically increase) to determine the remaining net exports.

Where I think the model breaks down, is to assume that there is no relationship between net exports and indigenous consumption - in countries where oil is a major part of the economy. How will a country earning much of their foreign exchange from oil exports be able to grow their economy (and indigenous consumption) whilst losing their main source of income? The UK is not a good example as oil is small part of our economy (~$50bn in a ~$2,000bn economy). The ELM, taken to its logical conclusion might see OPEC nations still producing some 20mbpd+ in several decades time yet exporting none of it as their internal consumption will have grown to use it all. In that scenario a country like France may well not be able to import any oil. However I think this scenario is nonsense since without the foreign exchange generating oil exports the OPEC countries will be in ruin, not able to feed themselves let alone import BMWs to burn all that oil. They will curtail their consumption in order to export oil.

For that reason I think that as long as oil is extracted from the ground somewhere in the world, there will be an export market and the French, for sake of argument, will be able to secure as much as their relative economic standing in the world allows them.