The Oil Drum: An Extension of the World Import/Export Land Model

There are many people on either side of the Export Land Model issue: those who think the internal consumption of an exporter will continue to increase at the detriment of exports and those who think there will be enough pressure, be it economic or otherwise, to stifle internal consumption so that net exports don’t suffer. I see no reason we won’t see both of these situations occurring depending on the specific details of a given exporter. The question, I think, is which effect will be dominant in the aggregate and to what degree? If, after the peak in world oil production, either effect is dominant in the extreme then “bad things” happen. If internal consumption continues to grow, importers will have to drastically decrease consumption. If exporters force their populace to decrease consumption for the sake of exports, my guess is this would initiate or fan unrest and increase instability in the exporting countries – possibly resulting in production loss (i.e. Nigeria) and hence a decline in net exports.

What I’ve set out to do in this post is to construct a World Import/Export Land Model (extending the work of westexas and Khebab, the most recent of which can be found here) followed by an investigation into one of the possible extreme situations above: the pre-peak rate of change in internal consumption of Export Land continues post-peak.

The Oil Drum