Feeling Peaked

Kevin Drum looks at Russian oil production and finds intimations of the apocalypse.

PEAK OIL WATCH....Over the past few years Russia has been a relative bright spot on the oil scene, expanding its production by over a million barrels per day between 2002 and 2007. But it looks like Russia is now due to join Norway, Mexico, and the UK as countries that have hit their peak and are about to go into decline:

Russian supply in the first three months of this year fell for the first time this decade, averaging 10 million barrels a day, a 1% drop from the year-earlier period...."There isn't a lot of supply coming on right now, so this [lack of non-OPEC growth] is framing the whole narrative of the market," said Roger Diwan, a financial energy adviser at PFC Energy in Washington.

...
...it's true that both the Saudis and the Russians have megaprojects due to come online over the next year or two, so it's not as if they're just twiddling their thumbs. Overall, though, oil at $100 a barrel sure doesn't seem to be spurring the kind of additional production you'd think it would. It's almost as if there's no net additional production to be

In this final remark, I think Kevin is underestimating the time it takes to bring in a major new oil field by a factor of five or so.

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