by theluckycountry » Fri 21 Nov 2025, 16:26:32
Peak Global net oil export capacity
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t reached its maximum potential by 2004 and hasn’t changed much in the past 21 years. During these two decades nations could only increase the amount they bought from abroad at the expense of others giving up consumption, or substituting imports with new sources of supply. And this is exactly what’s been going on since 2005, when the shale revolution has begun to turn the US (the world’s largest oil importer back then) into a net exporter. American oil imports, substituted by this new-found wealth, allowed other nations (China, India and the rest of the Global South) to more than quadruple (!) their consumption during the same time period, despite stagnating global export capacity.
But what is this net export capacity? Simply put, it is the difference between the amount of oil a country or region produces and the amount it imports. If a nation extracts more oil than it buys from abroad, it’s called a net exporter. On the other hand, nations buying more than they’re selling are net importers. But why do oil producing nations import oil in the first place? Well, because not all oil is equal: some fields produce heavy, dense, thick liquids, while others yield light, thin, gasoline-like fluids. In order to satisfy demand for all sort of oil products even oil producing nations need to import the right kind of petroleum to make everything they need from ethylene (used in plastics manufacturing) and gasoline, to jet and diesel fuel, not to mention heavier products such as lubricants, asphalt etc.
(Alternatively, they would have to import the missing products themselves). Thus, in order to judge whether a nation is a net importer or exporter, the weight of all crude oil plus condensate and natural gas liquids (separated from the production of natural gas) has to be taken into account on the production side, just like all the inland demand (plus international aviation, marine bunker fuels, refinery fuel and losses) has to be accounted for on the consumption side. The result of that calculation is what you see on the chart above, and the ones below.
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/th ... a20270aaa9It's pretty much in line with the charts of peak oil production per nation. It's been a long time since I looked at those but Australia peaked and began it's decline in 2001, the US in 1972 naturally. Others, like Russia have come back with new conventional supply and become big exporters. I don't count the US shale bubble oil naturally. It was such low EROEI the industry never made a profit! It was a waste of resources basically and they might as well have turned coal into oil for all it mattered. It got the "barrels" up but added no wealth to the nation like the 1920's boom did.
We're 17 years past the peak now and the 3rd World is going hungry and dark. We'll be next, we're well on the way in fact.