Listening to the Experts

As we move through this period of grace before the tightening oil supply situation becomes more clearly evident to more people, there are increasing numbers of statistics appearing that seem to confuse the issue. For example there was the recent revision upward of the US demand growth last year by 213,000 bd. Then there are also some conflicting views on what China plans on doing, some of which discussion is given in our earlier posts of this past week. There are questions about the state of Russian production, and exactly how much oil is coming, and from where in the Middle East. In addition there is the conflict over the actual amount that the British part of the North Sea oil is declining, is it the 17% that has been noted as occurring monthly for the past quarter by the Scotsman, or is it the 5.6% that the latest UKOOA report would have it.

Some of these issues can be explained. For example the current drop in North Slope production of 6.5% for June was due to pipeline maintenance . The recent short term drops in production from the Gulf, including Cantarell in Mexico, are transient ones caused by the need to ensure the safety of the platforms and crews.

Others, however, cannot…

More after the jump at The Oil Drum.