New Fields May Offset Oil Drop

…CERA has drawn fire among skeptics for being one of the most optimistic forecasters in the industry. The company predicted in June that world oil production, now at just above 85 million barrels a day, could hit 112 million barrels a day by 2017.

The task of reaching that mark appears daunting. According to CERA’s own rate of decline, the world’s existing fields by 2017 will be producing about 33 million fewer barrels a day than they are now. So hitting a production level of 112 million barrels a day within a decade would require adding 59 million barrels a day in new capacity — or more than six times today’s daily output from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter.


CERA argues that nearly half of that output will come from nonconventional sources such as biofuels and natural-gas liquids.

“However you spin it, a 4.5% decline rate is a very sobering fact,” says Thomas Petrie, a veteran Denver-based oil banker and Merrill Lynch & Co. vice president. “People are running hard to find new sources of oil, and that’s just to keep even. When was the last time we discovered another Iran?”

Wall St. Journal