Peak Oil Worries Grow With Dependency on the United States And Russia

For a decade now, oil production across the world has been falling, with prices only being sustained by the combined production between Russia and the United States. Russia, which saw huge increases in production up to 2,000 barrels per day in the early 2000s, has finally seen its growth begin to stagnate. Indeed, excluding Russia and the United States, analysts argue the oil production peak was in February of 2006 and that we are now almost 3,000,000 barrels below that level.

Two Russian think tanks, the Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and The Analytical Center for the Government of the Russian Federation seem to agree, stating:

– Over the course of the next 25 years, total oil production will fall by .3 billion tons.
– Oil that can be conventionally extracted will have a supply peak from 2015 to 2020.
– Petroleum exports will peak in 2015.
– In a mere 7 years, Russian annual oil production will fall by 55 million tons.

Nevertheless, analysts from Oilprice.com are convinced that even these projections by Russian agencies are overly optimistic. They note that Russian research on productive capacity is founded on the belief that old oil reserves will continue producing at a high rate for years to come due to growth in discovered reserves.

Hence, responsibility for future growth in oil production and price stability would seem to fall squarely on the shoulders of American producers, an imposing task for the oil companies within a single nation — even with all the wealth and resources at their disposal.
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