Doomsday Rhetoric Ignores Signs of Growth in Global Production Capacity

IHS Energy:

Under the radar of headline-grabbing issues, though, is evidence that the current dire trends may not be long-lived.
On the basis of bottom-up tracking of significant worldwide liquids development projects and assessment of oil-depletion rates, IHS Energy forecasts that global output capacity will increase to approximately 85.5 million BOPD by 2008. Much of this growth is driven by enhanced recoveries from giant older fields in the Middle East, the FSU, and the Caspian region, plus Canadian tar sands. This outlook does not include considerations for possible expansion of production capacity in Iraq or Libya. It implies potential increases in production capacity that would exceed even robust demand projections made by others. Thereby, oil markets would achieve a new equilibrium.

SPE