The Scales are Balanced

Here then is a chart-fest for all of you, showing the balance between countries who expanded their production compared to the previous year and those whose production declined. It’s pretty self explanatory, but note the difference between the strong growth years around 2004 and the very slight decline experienced in the last two years when the scales have been nearly ‘balanced’.

Now, with an enormous caveat that this is based on just one month of data, here is the production balance for the start of 2008 – what a difference compared to last year’s average! Saudi Arabia, which was at the bottom of the class for 2007, has jumped straight to pole position starting 2008 nearly 500kb/d higher than its average for 2007. Meanwhile Russia, a top three performer in 2007, has plummetted to second last although it doesn’t have much company in the ‘declining’ category at this early stage.

The Oil Drum: ANZ