The diagram above shows the development of oil, natural and electricity consumption for the Russian Federation for the years 1990 through 2007. During the five years post the disintegration of the Soviet Union, oil consumption were roughly halved, natural gas consumption fell with approximately 20 % and electricity consumption with roughly 25 %.
NOTE both y-axis’s are not zero scaled.

What preliminary data now suggests is that during this financial crisis oil, natural gas and electricity consumption falls.

The worst imaginable scenario is World War III, but production would perhaps only be cut in half.

That's a very optimistic "worst imaginable" nuclear world war if I ever saw one!

For a world wide financial collapse scenario look to the Former Soviet Union's experience. (Perhaps you can post the USSR production graph?)

From Mazmascience's energy browser (based on BP data)

[Edit: deleted graph as its creator Jonathan Callahan has posted the info below]

Paul,

The Former Soviet Union provides an excellent example of how any analysis based solely on past production rates can fail to predict future production.

The following graphs from the Energy Export Databrowser show production and consumption histories for the Former Soviet Union and for the Russian Federation. The data come from the 2008 BP Statistical Review.

Anyone looking at the FSU time series in the mid 80's would have surmised (or calculated with Hubbert linearization) that they were on their bumpy plateau and that their production (and exports) were about to suffer a decline.

Production did in fact drop significantly starting in 1990 but it was due to political rather than geologic factors. And consumption dropped almost as fast but with a slight lag. By the year 2000, FSU exports were at the same level they were in 1980 and they were significantly higher last year.

The bottom line is that political/economic factors are hugely important and less amenable to the kind of analysis that science and engineering types are comfortable with.

Techniques like Hubbert linearization, when applied to politically stable zones like US or North Sea production, let us know the outlines of possible production. But future production, consumption and price levels, especially in periods of political and economic chaos, remain very difficult to predict.

-- Jon

Russia had the advantage of the rest of the world being in good shape, and an economy that in many respects continued to function (people had homes, public transportation, their own gardens). I think it is a better situation than we could hope for here.

Paul-the-Engineer "World wide economic collapse is happening, but the developing economies will recover quickly because they have unexploited potential in the form of basic industry and infrastructure needs".

Could you expand more on this line of thinking? I am living in a developing country in Asia.

I disagree with your assessment and my background includes many years of work with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, along with the forecasting and scenarios associated with them. A full scale nuclear war could cut oil and gas production by far more than half depending on targeting choices, strategic goals pursued, and weapon configurations used.

The USSR was held up from the full impact of collapse by the surrounding nations. A global collapse that effects everyone has no one left to hold the rest up.

I suggest that your scenario is excessively optimistic, especially for one involving the exchange of several thousand strategic warheads.