I have seriously and carefully tried to find information online about how much export oil is left on the market in 2022, but I found nothing. This is very significant. One is silent about the most important thing. Oh well, I finally found a few articles. The closest I come is the article "
The Road To Clean Energy Is Messier Than We Thought", by Loren Steffy, UH Energy Scholar, 14.10.2021 on Forbes, where it is said that:
"(Jeffrey) Brown has tracked the combined net exports of the world's 33 oil exporting nations since 2005. That year, global net exports peaked at 45 million to 46 million barrels a day, and they haven't exceeded that level since. Instead, the amount of oil available for export worldwide has steadily declined. He estimates it has fallen to about 30 million barrels a day."
My comment: Going from 45-46 million barrels to 30 million barrels from 2005 to 2021, that's a decline of 15-16 million barrels, ie. approx. 30% decline, in about sixteen years. And I calculate the decline in percentage per year to be approx. 1.9%, i.e. approx. 1 million barrels per year (1 is 1,9 % of 45). Note that this is only the average decline, as the decline accelerates over time * (check out the
Export Land Model to study this deeper). But if we project the rate of decline so far into the future, and do not expect the rate of decline to accelerate, or if we roughly estimate that we lose 1 million barrels per year in export oil volume in the world, from now on into the future, then, counting from 2021, we have only 21 million barrels of export oil to share in 2030, and 15 million barrels of export oil to share in 2036, the year I guess I'll die of starvation. If we count on an acceleration of the decline rate, we may optimally have only 5 million barrels of export oil on the market then, an amount that would soon be swallowed up by China and India alone. If we expect that China and India will together increase their GDP by what is for them a modest 5% per year (1) after 2021, year by year, and thus increase their oil consumption by the same figure per year, then India's oil consumption, which is about 5 mbd (million barrels per day) today, will increase (roughly calculated in the head, 5 % of 5 mbd is 0,25 mbd, 15 x 0,25 is 3,75, and then add a little more, accounting for the accelerated rate of decline) in fifteen years by close to five mbd, which means it will rise to close to nine, ten mbd, and then China's oil consumption, which is about 15,5 mbd today, increases in fifteen years by thirteen to fifteen mbd (5 % of 15,5 mbd is 0,775, 15 x 0.775 is 11,625 and then add a little more, accounting for the accelerated rate of decline) to a total of close to twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty mbd in 2036. In total, then, these two countries increase their oil consumption by
at least eighteen mbd by 2036, a rate of increase
that would quickly eat up what remains of the export oil market as early as around 2030 (2). Note that Jeffrey J. Brown has come to similar conclusions as me.
This is simple mathematics. You were able to follow me, weren't you? Our days are numbered. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out. And this is yet a best case scenario. Because I have not taken into account the following ten factors, each weighing a lot:
1) Possible wars that will disrupt the oil industry (think an escalation of the Ukraine war, a possible Third World War, not to mention a nuclear war between Russia and USA).
2) Natural disasters of all kinds, things like super solar storms, supervolcanoes and hurricanes which will disrupt the oil industry (especially the offshore oil industry and coastline refineries).
3) The possibility of our oil reserves being overstated by half (note that Jeffrey Brown's calculations are based on BP Statistical Review data, which is the official data, the very optimistic corporation and government data), see Ron Patterson's article about it here.
4) The bursting of the shale oil bubble and the fall of the Shale Oil Ponzi Scheme which leads to a very steep decline of the shale oil production.
5) The very steep decline rate in the future of conventional oil production due to a long time of Enhanced Oil Recovery (things like pumping water into the oil wells).
6) The collapse of future oil discovery because of lack of upstream capital investment, due to the bursting of the Everything Bubble, oil scarcity and climate concerns (Green transition efforts).
7) The possibility of civilization collapsing around 2025-2030 because of a combination of energy shortages and abrupt climate change, which will lead to the collapse and demise of the oil industry because everything is linked. See a video about it here.
8) The issue of the lack of affordability in the oil industry and the world. According to academic peakoiler Gail Tverberg most of the oil reserves will be left in the ground in the future because it will be uneconomical to exploit, and because of too high EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested). "A large share of the world’s oil reserves are unconventional oil reserves, of one type or another. The fact that rising oil prices are a real problem for citizens means that these unconventional reserves are unlikely to be tapped. Instead, we may be dealing with seriously short supplies of products we need for operating our economies, including diesel oil and jet fuel."
(from the blogpost "Today’s Energy Crisis Is Very Different from the Energy Crisis of 2005", posted on November 17, 2022 by Gail Tverberg on the blog "Our Finite World")
9) The wish for energy conservation in countries that wake up to the reality of Peak Oil, keeping oil in the ground for future generations.
10) Fungible sharing of the remaining exportable oil between the ex-exporting countries. This means that when an exporting country becomes an importing country, it begins to eat from the remaining volume of export oil of the remaining exporting countries, making it shrink very fast, with an accelerated decline rate.
...and so on.
* a much greater acceleration of the decline rate will come from the fact that the conventional oil production plateaued between 2005 and 2019, and that the volume of All Fossil Liquids rose during the same period, and in spite of this the volume of export oil in the world has declined by 1 mbd per year on average, and because of this the volume of export oil will decline much faster when the conventional oil production begins to decline, not to speak of when All Fossil Liquids begins to decline, which make it completely misleading to project the decline of the volume of export oil 2005-2021 on the future. If the decline was exponential during the time 2005-2021, how fast will it not be when All Fossil Liquids begin to decline, and it can begin to decline really fast, because of 4) and 5) above.
(2) observe that
China imported around 10 million barrels of oil per day in 2021, and
India imported around 4 million barrels per day during the same year, which together make 14 million barrels per day of oil import. Add to this figure the 18 million barrels per day of increase in oil consumption and thus oil imports during 2021 and 2036, and you have 32 million barrels per day of oil imports only in China and India, which is more than there was on the export market 2021. This was why I said that China and India
"would quickly eat up what remains of the export oil market as early as around 2030", which means that there will not be any export oil left to other countries than China and India at around 2030, which also was the conclusion that Jeffrey J. Brown came to in his calculations, referred to above.
Observe also that the rest of the world is also growing their oil consumption and their GDP,
World gdp growth rate for 2021 was 5.80%, which eats more and more of the volume of export oil available to the world.
Note also that according to Steve St. Angelo at SrsRocco Report, in
this youtubevideo, world oil production today declines with 10 % a year, if no new oil is added, and have to be replaced by a Russia in oil every year. This is possible now, but it can only continue for so long. Note also that oil exports decline at a far faster rate than the decline in oil production alone (see the Wikipedia-article "
Export Land Model"). This is why my calculations above are a best case scenario. So what happens when we cannot offset the declines every year with new Russias? What happens to export oil decline when world oil production declines 10 % a year, which it will do at some point in time?
