Ken, the US has increased demand over the past 5 years. However that is only part of the picture.
"So peak oil for the United States occurred in 1970, and it is true that every year since then we have pumped less oil and found less oil. ... This is the contribution of Alaska, and you can see this not going to be our salvation to pump ANWR because ANWR contains probably not even half as much as Prudhoe Bay. ... Surprisingly from the most pessimistic to the most optimistic, there was not much deviation in what the estimate is as to what the known reserves are out there. It is about 1,000 gigabarrels. That sounds like an awful lot of oil. But when you divide into that the amount of oil which we use,
about 20 million barrels a day, and the amount of oil the rest of the world uses, about 60 million barrels a day, as a matter of fact, the total now is a bit over the 80 million that those two add up to. About 83 1/2 , I think. If you divide that into the 1,000 gigabarrels, you come out at about 40 years of oil remaining in the world.
...We are now importing about two-thirds of that. At the Arab oil embargo we imported about one-third of that. So we are now importing, relatively, two times more oil, actual quantity much more than that, but relatively about two times more oil. ... Pretty consistently for every year after 1982, we have used more oil than we found. Today worldwide we are pumping at least six barrels of oil for every barrel that we find. ... There is just no real expectation that there are going to be big additional fields of oil found out there. This dropoff in discovery is really in spite of very improved technology for finding oil. ... As a matter of fact, in 1982, more oil was used in looking for oil than the oil they found in 1982. Pretty consistently for every year after 1982, we have used more oil than we found. Today worldwide we are pumping at least six barrels of oil for every barrel that we find. ... There is just no real expectation that there are going to be big additional fields of oil found out there. This dropoff in discovery is really in spite of very improved technology for finding oil. ... No matter how many more wells you drill, you are not going to find oil that is not there. ... Why should they be terrified? Why should they be terrified just because we have reached the peak of oil production? Last year, China used about 30 percent more oil. India now is demanding more oil. As a matter of fact, China now is the second largest importer of oil in the world. They have passed Japan. When you look at how important oil is to our economy, you can understand the big concern if, in fact, we cannot produce oil any faster than we are producing it now and there are increasing demands, as there will be, for oil. In our country, for instance, we have a debt that we must service. It will be essentially impossible to service that debt if our economy does not continue to grow. So there are enormous potential consequences, which is why he says that these people are absolutely terrified by the phenomenon known as peak oil. ... That is what we have here in this exponential curve. And by the way, we, and when I say ``we,'' I mean the world, have been using oil as if our economy could just continue to grow on this unlimited exponential curve. Whether it is 2 percent a year or 5 percent a year or near 10 percent, which is what China has been growing in the last few years, we are still on an exponential curve.
Not quite so steep if we are on a lower growth rate. It goes up and up forever and ever.
Obviously, there is not an inexhaustible amount of oil in the world; so we have the exhaustible resource, which is this lower curve. It reaches a peak, which, if not now, shortly. Oil, as the Members may have noticed, is $54 or $55 a barrel. I saw the other day one future had sold for $100 a barrel, and the experts are saying we are probably going to see $60 before we see $50. We will wait and see. "
vheadline.com
That means that each year the US is importing more oil even if there was no US growth in demand.
So you have more demand for foreign oil from China, India and the US and probably some demand growth from other countries as well. Each year the demand for foreign oil has been increasing.
-Now what if local demand in oil producing countries grows. |
