This news about Oman production and exports came out a couple of days ago, however I have not seen much discussion about it in the relevant energy website, the information reported may seem trivial since Oman daily production is quite small (739k bpd), however the trends demonstrated in the numbers have big implications for future oil prices:

Oman oil production rose by 3.6% in the first 5 months of 2008; however oil exports declined by 5.1% compared to the first 5 months of 2007, due to high domestic consumption, fueled by 12.9% growth in GDP due to the high oil prices.

In the Export Land Model developed Jeffrey Brown, oil exports are expected to decline at a faster rate then production, once a nation experince post peak oil production combined with rising consumption, however the trend with Oman is quite different and even more alarming, as oil exports may decline even if the country oil production is rising, due to internal consumption growing faster then oil production.

There has been other countries with flat production that had a decline in exports (most notably Russia), but I have not seen a country with 3.6% production growth, experince a 5.1% export decline, if this same trende continue and expand to other Gulf countries, the implications for oil prices will be very signifcant.

Regards,
Nawar

Oman news:
http://www.tradearabia.com/news/OGN_146785.html