World decline rate

Feb. 4, 2008
The Jan. 17, 2008, press release by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (see www.cera.com), which was carried by Reuters, reported the world’s oil supplies were to rise to 112 million b/d by 2017.

The Jan. 17, 2008, press release by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (see www.cera.com), which was carried by Reuters, reported the world’s oil supplies were to rise to 112 million b/d by 2017. This rise is in spite of CERA’s other conclusion that the world’s oil fields are declining in capacity at the average rate of 4.5%/year. These conclusions are clearly suspect.

Although it is unlikely that global oil production is likely to drop significantly in the next few years, major sustainable increases are equally unlikely. Given the current global production of 86 million b/d and CERA’s 4.5% decline rate, global capacity would have to increase by 7.5 million b/d each year for the next 10 years to reach 112 million b/d. This is a total of 75 million b/d of new capacity in 10 years. Even excluding the effect of declining rates, achieving 112 million b/d within a decade represents a massive leap of 26 million b/d in global capacity.

To put this in perspective, 75 million b/d of new capacity is the equivalent of eight new Saudi Arabias or 14 new Irans in just 10 years. Considering the reality that Saudi Arabia, with 25% of the world’s best proven reserves, is already investing $50 billion to increase its production capacity by 2 million b/d, where does CERA expect the additional 24 million b/d of production capacity to come from, let alone the replacement for the 51 million b/d of declines?

Dr. Moujahed Al-Husseini
GeoArabia
Manama, Bahrain

Dr. Sadad Al-Husseini
Saudi Aramco (retired)
Dhahran