Non-Opec output ‘to peak by 2015’

Oil production outside Opec will keep rising until about 2015, while global output will continue to expand through 2025 at least, a top analyst at consultancy Wood Mackenzie said yesterday.
Countering doomsday “peak oil” theorists who believe global oil production may be reaching its limits, Wood Mackenzie said research based on its database of field-by-field global data showed supplies should keep expanding for at least 20 years.
It expects global oil production outside Opec to rise to about 52mn bpd by 2015 from 47mn bpd now, based mostly on existing fields and imminent developments, Kate Broughton, head of oils research at Wood Mackenzie, said.
That is an annual average growth rate of around 1.25%, while Opec capacity will rise even more quickly.
The study may put to rest immediate concerns over the oil industry’s ability to cope with rapid demand growth in big consumers such as the US and China, and highlights Opec’s weakening market power in coming years.
Against oil demand estimated to rise an average annual 1.8% up to 2015, non-Opec output will force the group to hold back some 8mn bpd of capacity by early next decade, a factor that could send price down to $45, she said.
“Around that point (spare capacity) begins to tail off again,” she added, which should revive oil to around $60 by 2025, in a repeat of the capacity crunch that caused a spike in 2004. It expects oil demand to grow an average 1.1% a year from 2015 to 2025.
Broughton estimated that Saudi Arabia would have the capacity to pump some 16mn bpd by 2025, up from 11.3mn bpd now, despite concerns raised several years ago that its huge but older reservoirs may struggle to pump more.
By 2025, Wood Mackenzie expects non-Opec production to fall back to 47.2mn bpd, taking into account likely future discoveries and improved recovery at existing fields.

Gulf Times