US To Be World’s Top Oil Producer By 2015, Though Dominance Won’t Last: IEA
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The United States will surpass Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s top oil producer by 2015, said the International Energy Agency on Tuesday, however diminishing returns in shale formations could see it lose its top spot in another 15 years.
According to the IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook report, the U.S. could produce as much as 11.6 million barrels of oil per day by 2020, up from 9.2 million bpd last year; yet output is set to plateau after 2020 as the largest shale plays yield less oil.
The United States will surpass Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s top oil producer by 2015, said the International Energy Agency on Tuesday, however diminishing returns in shale formations could see it lose its top spot in another 15 years.
According to the IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook report, the U.S. could produce as much as 11.6 million barrels of oil per day by 2020, up from 9.2 million bpd last year; yet output is set to plateau after 2020 as the largest shale plays yield less oil.
As such, the IEA remains confident that the Middle East will still be the “centre” of global oil supply, adding that the U.S. shale boom is unlikely to be replicated by any other country in the near future.
[quote]”The role of OPEC countries in quenching the world’s thirst for oil is reduced temporarily over the next ten years by rising output from the United States, from oil sands in Canada, from deepwater production in Brazil and from natural gas liquids from all over the world. But, by the mid-2020s, non-OPEC production starts to fall back and countries in the Middle East will provide most of the increase in global supply,” said the report.[/quote]Related: US Oil Production To Rise 74 Percent By 2022: Report
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The Middle East, as the world’s only large-scale source of low-cost oil, “is and will remain the heart of the global oil industry for many years to come,” added IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol to Reuters.
Across the globe, the IEA said that Asia will continue to drive global energy demand. By 2030, China is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest oil consumer, while the region will be responsible for two-thirds of future energy demand.
Meanwhile, oil prices are expected to rise to about $216 a barrel by 2035 (or $128 by 2012 terms), the IEA said, to support the development of unconventional resources.
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The Paris-based agency warned that the world was not yet “on the cusp of a new era of oil abundance” and repeated that investment in new supply needed to be kept up to avert any future supply crunch.
More than half of the 790 billion barrels the world will need to produce by 2035 is needed to compensate for declining output from mature deposits, the agency said. Output declines at a rate of 6 percent a year at conventional oil fields once they reach peak production, according to the report.
