If one reads that quoted line carefully, one will notice that he is referring to combined oil and gas production. It may well be that oil production won't be able to "keep up with demand" at a much sooner date (if that date hasn't already passed). And, there's no mention of the export problem which you have so clearly shown to be important in many posts.

From an economic point of view, demand can never exceed supply over time. The "market" will respond with increasing prices for the commodity in shortfall, until demand and supply will balance. Of course, that is theory and surely leaves some folks out in the cold who would like their demand satisfied. If one thinks a bit further about this statement, when supply can no longer "keep up" with demand, that implies a rather large increase in price, limited only by the cost of the available alternatives, including FF sources that are difficult to obtain. Since the cost of the alternatives tends to increase along with the market price of energy, it's likely that we will be due for some rather large increases in energy costs, as well as major disruptions of all sorts. I think the many reports we are presently seeing about global energy shortages is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. None of this is new to those of us who frequent TOD.

Keep moving, keep growing, nothing to see here, no need to PANIC, Everything's Under Control.

E. Swanson

If Iran invaded Turkey from the rear, would Greece help?

Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand.

Peak Oil. We are the frog in a pot of cool water placed on a fire. Subprime is just a symptom of being incrementally cooked; the incremental increase of commute costs and house payments until more and more people cannot afford both.

Bail-outs and tax stimuli toss ice in the water but throw currency stability on the fire.

We might cool the fire or get out of the pot by changing the lifeblood of our economy from oil to ingenuity. This requires innovation. Current costs will be attacked by innovators if power generation and transportation are de-monopolized.

The Internet is a great example of innovation following de-monopolization of communications. Germany's solar success is an example of innovation following de-monopolization of power generation.

Shell made the statement that easy oil will be gone by 2015 in the Professional Engineer magazine, (The UK's Institute of Mechanical Engineers bi-weekly publication), almost a year ago. Thus the leaked, message is not as radical a development from Shells public position, as it may at first appear. The publicising of their alternative scenarios is the new part.
I spent the day at one of the two leading petrochem industry pump vendors today. They are currently working on six brine
injection pumps for Saudi Aramco, each driven by 18MW electric motors, with a 300barg casing rating. ie. the head generated must be almost 3000m, and the flowrates anything up to 1500m3/hr or if you prefer 225,000bpd per pump, 6 pump total equivalent 1.35mbpd. Quite what fraction of that injected brine flowrate emerges back as oil I don't know, it would seem to be a serious capacity edition... or maybe, its just to make up for rising water fractions, to maintain oil flow. ...

Hi Jeffrey,

Thankfully, we have the analysis of the ELM-team.

re: "top five exporters". Just to help fill in the picture, what approximate percentage of world total do theses five represent? (Or, is there some better way to place this is context?)

re: For example, "Or, to put it another way, our middle case is that it would take all of the top five net exports in 2015 to meet current US import demand."

This would leave the remaining (?) percent of the current exporters to meet demand for the rest of the world. (Or would there be any remaining exporters by that time?)

re: Is there an ELM for NG? Or, is it assumed that the situation has too many variables and/or limited possible export distances?

The EB referenced a Weekend WSJ article on one guy's Peak Oil preparations. It's up on the WSJ website, behind a paywall.

In a World Short Of Oil, Provisions Must Be Made
Mr. Wissner of Middleville
Stocks Up on Rice, Gold;
No Faith in a 'Techno Fix'
By NEIL KING JR.
January 26, 2008

MIDDLEVILLE, Mich. . . . Aaron Wissner, a Grand Rapids, Mich., middle-school computer instructor, is part of a growing community of so-called peakniks, who are convinced that peak oil production is nigh and that there will be difficult consequences.

Mr. Wissner has had more than a few fretful nights since he became "peak-oil aware," as he calls it, about 30 months ago. In embracing the theory that the world's oil production is about to peak, Mr. Wissner has tossed himself into a movement that is gaining thousands of adherents, egged on by soaring oil prices, the rarity of big new oil finds and writings on the Internet. . .

. . . In the dining room, their son gurgled and cooed as Ms. Sager spooned baby food into his open mouth. "We're not there yet," she said. "It's easy to forget that growing your own food is a lot of work."

Read this CEO's memo as:

"Shell scrambles to assert legitimacy and retain market share in the face of growing competition, ludicrous profits, laughable investment, and an imminent peak in conventional world oil supplies..."

IMO he is a rat and a liar. As his vision for the future he floats the Carbon Capture raft. Carbon capture does not address the issue of dwindling and unreliable supply nor does it deal with the obvious issue of carbon emission from liquid fuels used for transportation.

For Shell to survive long-term they will need to invest in energies that are outside of traditional fossil fuels. Something this small minded exec seems to have happily overlooked.

Maybe he will show 'proactive vision' in his later statements. For my part, I won't hold my breath. This is little more than corporate damage control.