New Factors Influencing the Development of Free-World Oil Resources

摘要

In the past, oil production trends have not always been an accurate indicator of exploration success and development potential. Foreign producers, particularly, have been affected by disruptive situations independent of the geology of their fields - revolutions, wars, and embargoes. These old factors continue to affect production. However, new nongeological factors are having an increasingly potent impact on crude oil supplies worldwide: capricious cut-backs to ensure high prices, conservation practices designed to preserve the unique and finite resources of individual countries, a shift in many oil-rich countries to the export of petroleum products rather than crude oil, a change in the share of heavy oils on world markets (significant because of the inability of some importing countries to utilize them), delays in outer-continental-shelf leasing schedules and related exploration in the US, land withdrawals in the US, and implementation of US legislation such as the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977, which can prohibit development in pristine areas. Individually, these new phenomena tend to delay rather than forestall development of the world's crude oil; however acting together or with other factors such as political upheavals and natural catastrophes, they can cause or aggravate supply/demand imbalances. As the world supply is depleted, the importance of these nongeological factors promises to increase. (ERA citation 04:051115)