Both the IEA and OPEC have now released figures for total liquid fuel supply in June (see above), and both show a sharp increase, mainly due to OPEC, particularly Saudi Arabia. However, levels have still not reached those prior to the loss of Libyan production in February/March (still less returned to the pre-Libya trend).
Here's the picture since 2000, also with prices on the right hand scale:
Oil prices first rose when Libya went offline, and then fell again with the resulting slowdown in the global economy.
Here is the graph of price versus production:
This month, I've added a notional orange envelope for the (smaller) oil shock we've been experiencing in late 2010-2011. The shape of this is very uncertain of course, as is the future development. If the global economy continues to recover, then I expect oil demand to butt against supply limits and prices to rise again. On the other hand, if events in Europe were to dramatically worsen and start to affect the real economy of the larger countries there, then demand, and prices, could fall further.
Still, this plot does indicate that the global oil industry is able to supply a few mb/d more at any given price point than it could in the 2005-2008 period.
3 comments:
It looks like the production mid-points of your envelopes are about 85 and 87.5 million bbl/day. Most of this increase, per EIA data, is due to NGLs and "other liquids", which grew from about 7.7 mbd in 2005 to 8.7 mbd by early 2011, and from about 1.1 mbd in 2005 to 2.2 mbd by early 2011, respectively.
As we've discussed before, the total net energy available is what really counts. I'd guess that NGLs have a fairly high EROI, and that "other liquids" have a low enough EROI so that they don't really add much net energy. It seems likely that the EROI of crude has eroded somewhat during this period.
If the total net energy supplied by liquid fuels has grown, it's probably largely due to increased production of NGLs.
It would be very interesting to plot a line through the data points within the different envelopes. It's hard to tell, but it looks like the slope on the newer one might be lower than the first. Would that suggest it takes a higher price to get the same increase in production?
I also wonder if the data might be kind of fractal. I see a mini cluster in the overlap area, and who knows what you would find if the data were finer. I have no idea what that might indicate.
I mean a higher price relative to the "zone."
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