Kurt Cobb: Jeffrey Brown and the Net Oil Exports Crisis

With peak oil comes peak oil exports. Why Texas oilman Jeffrey Brown thinks the world is headed for a drastic energy downsizing and soon.

Texas oilmen who advocate for 1) a massive reduction in oil consumption through the electrification of transportation, 2) large investments in energy efficiency and 3) the relocalization of commerce to reduce the long and energy-intensive logistical lines now typical of the globalized economy are about as rare as vegetarians at a cattlemen’s association luncheon. In fact, Jeffrey Brown, a Dallas-based independent petroleum geologist who manages a joint-venture exploration program, may be one of a kind. The genesis of his rather radical views–radical, that is, for a Texas oilman–are a simple question he asked himself several years ago: What happens to oil exports in a world with constrained oil supplies?

“Low single-digit decline rates, that’s what people [concerned about the peaking of world oil supplies] have been thinking about,” Brown told me in a recent phone conversation. But he wondered what such decline rates for world oil production might mean for oil exports and by definition for the oil importers dependent on them.


His pondering led to the creation of the the Export Land Model. It goes something like this: A hypothetical oil exporter–let’s call it Export Land–has reached its peak in oil production. Assume domestic users consume half of all the oil produced in Export Land at the moment; assume a 5 percent annual decline rate for production; and assume a 2