I suspect I should apologize. Here I am talking about the future projections for energy production made by companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell, as though they were still the key and only players in the world. Yet in reality, Saudi Aramco (12.5 mbdoe), Gazprom (9.7 mbdoe) and National Iranian Oil (6.4 mbdoe) appear in the list before ExxonMobil arrives (at 5.3 mbdoe), and then there is PetroChina (at 4.4 mbdoe) before BP arrives (at 4.1 mbdoe), and it is only then that we find Shell, which lies 7th at 3.9 mbdoe.

So the projections of the ExxonMobil’s of the world are of somewhat lesser value than they might have been at one time. (For those curious, the list continues with Pemex (at 3.6 mbdoe), Chevron (at 3.5 mbdoe) and Kuwait Petroleum Co (3.2 mbdoe). This not only rounds out the top ten, it also closes out the list of those producing more than 3 mbdoe. (Abu Dhabi comes next at 2.9 mbdoe).

Yet with those caveats, and recognizing that Saudi Arabia now produces only slightly less than ExxonMobil, Shell and BP combined, let me review the BP forecast, having already completed that for ExxonMobil and Shell. While the latter two looked sufficiently far into the future as to obfuscate a little their shorter-term projections, BP is still focusing on the relatively short-term that runs to 2030.

Within that time frame, BP expects overall energy demand to grow by 36%, though like the ExxonMobil projection, BP expects that a “tremendous increase” in energy efficiency will continue to develop, thereby slowing the need for future resources. They point out that without this improvement in efficiency, global energy supply will need to double by 2030 in order to sustain economic growth.

This is particularly true for the United States, which BP sees approaching self-sufficiency in Energy, while it is the continued growth in demand from countries such as China, India and the Asian Pacific countries that provide most of additional need. Comparing their view from 2 years ago with the present there does not appear to be much change in the overall forecast. (Note that after the first two figures all the remainder come from the 2030 BP Energy Outlook).

The Oil Drum staff wishes a Merry Christmas to all in our readership community. We are on a brief hiatus in this period, and will be back with our regular publications early in the new year. In the meantime we present the top 10 of best read Oil Drum posts in 2012. The first in this series is an analysis by Heading Out discussing the report by Leonardo Maugeri on future oil production, originally published in July 2012.

The Tech Talks of the last few months have followed a path of looking in a relatively realistic manner at crude oil production with emphasis on that coming from the United States and Russia, as well as Saudi Arabia, the current focus of my weekly pieces. An earlier piece looked at a Citigroup report of considerable optimism, and the post explained why, in reality, it is impractical to anticipate much increase in US production this decade. Since then, after reviewing the production from Russia, several posts have shown why the current lead in Russian daily crude oil production is likely to be soon over and then decline, as the oil companies are not bringing new fields on line as fast as the old ones are running out. Saudi Arabia, as the current posts are in the process of explaining, is unlikely to increase production much beyond 10 mbd, since Ghawar, the major field on which its current production level is built, is reaching the end of its major contribution, though it will continue to produce at a lower rate into the future. The bottom line, at least to date, is that there is no evidence from the top three producers that their production will be even close, in total, to current levels by the end of the decade.

So, (h/t Leanan) there now comes an Energy Study from Harvard which boldly states that this is rubbish - that by 2020, global production will be at 110.6 mbd and these concerns that most of us have at The Oil Drum (inter alia) are chimeras of the imagination.

The theme of these posts over the past eighteen months is to look at the leading producer nations that provide crude oil to the world, and to see if it is realistic to anticipate significant increases in their production. Posts have now looked at North America, Russia, Saudi Arabia and China based on the original list of rankings produced by the EIA in 2009. And, as I noted before beginning the China posts, the interesting question at the moment relates to a) how much oil Iran is currently producing and b) how much, realistically, can it be expected to produce?

These are not questions with the same answer, since the current sanctions imposed on the country have clearly already had an impact on the amount of oil that is being exported from Iran. Nevertheless, the volumes produced have fallen below those now achieved by China, and for that reason China was given priority when it came to the order of writing these posts. But back at the beginning of 2011, there was no doubt that Iran was one of the top 5 producers, particularly if one combines the USA and Canada into the new “politically correct” term of North America as a way of dodging questions on long-term US production levels.

If one looks at the latest September OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR), for example, there is now a gap of 1 mbd between the official production claims, which are shown below, and the reports from other sources, which follow.

The Tech Talks of the last few months have followed a path of looking in a relatively realistic manner at crude oil production with emphasis on that coming from the United States and Russia, as well as Saudi Arabia, the current focus of my weekly pieces. An earlier piece looked at a Citigroup report of considerable optimism, and the post explained why, in reality, it is impractical to anticipate much increase in US production this decade. Since then, after reviewing the production from Russia, several posts have shown why the current lead in Russian daily crude oil production is likely to be soon over and then decline, as the oil companies are not bringing new fields on line as fast as the old ones are running out. Saudi Arabia, as the current posts are in the process of explaining, is unlikely to increase production much beyond 10 mbd, since Ghawar, the major field on which its current production level is built, is reaching the end of its major contribution, though it will continue to produce at a lower rate into the future. The bottom line, at least to date, is that there is no evidence from the top three producers that their production will be even close, in total, to current levels by the end of the decade.

So, (h/t Leanan) there now comes an Energy Study from Harvard which boldly states that this is rubbish - that by 2020, global production will be at 110.6 mbd and these concerns that most of us have at The Oil Drum (inter alia) are chimeras of the imagination.