The Oil Drum

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/1/27/14471/5832
Hubbert Linearization Analysis of the Top Three Net Oil Exporters
Posted by Prof. Goose on January 27, 2006 - 1:47pm
[ED: This is a guest post by westexas...]

It’s interesting to take a trip down memory lane, to my original post on Net Exports, in January, 2006, and to scroll down through the comments. Note that I slightly modified my Export Land Model (ELM).

In the comment thread, based on Khebab’s work I said that Russia could probably show a year or two of increasing production, with the decline probably startng in 2007.

My concluding paragraph in the post (with my consent) was slightly edited by PG. The original reads as follows:

"As predicted by Hubbert Linearization, two of the three top net oil exporters are producing below their peak production level. The third country, Saudi Arabia, is probably on the verge of a permanent and irreversible decline. Both Russia and Saudi Arabia are probably going to show significant increases in consumption going forward. I predict that these factors will interact this year to produce an unprecedented--and probably permanent--net oil export crisis."

Based on EIA data, net exports by the top five net oil exporters dropped by 800,000 bpd in 2006, from a 2005 peak of 23.5 mbpd, and I estimate that they dropped by about one mbpd in 2007. If we average these two declines, we get 0.9 mbpd. 23.5 mbpd divided by 0.9 mbpd, gives us 26 years of remaining net oil exports from the top five, which is also the middle case in our (Khebab/Brown) top five net exporters paper.