Oilwatch Monthly November 2009

The Oilwatch Monthly is a newsletter that is available free of charge with the latest data on oil supply, demand, oil stocks, spare capacity and exports.

Spare capacity in OPEC countries increased from 1 to 4 million b/d from July 2008 to April 2009, and since remained at that level according to the Energy Information Administration (excluding Nigeria, Iraq and Venezuela). This 3 million b/d increase in spare capacity matches well with declining OPEC oil production of 3.01 million b/d from July 2008 to April 2009. But, from April to August 2009 production increased by 476,000 b/d while spare capacity remained stable, showing a divergence. My conclusion: investments in new capacity are still sufficient to compensate production decline in peaked fields in OPEC. Another way to tabulate this is through total OPEC production capacity, calculated by adding estimated spare capacity on top of monthly production. Using EIA figures this gives the following annual increase in OPEC total production capacity and year on year changes:

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5972