The Oil Drum: Europe

Greeen (left scale) monthly spot price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, expressed in $2005 (CPI deflated) per barrel. Plum (right scale), number of barrels of WTI crude purchasable by forty average hours of private industry wages, pre-tax. Source: EIA for crude prices, BLS for CPI index, and BLS via Alfred for average hourly wages. Dashed lines are extrapolations of exponential fit from Jan 2002 on for illustration of trends only. These are not predictions, and the basis for assuming future trends will be similar to past ones is weak.

Average daily total liquid production, by month, from EIA (green), IEA (plum), and OPEC (indigo) plus daily crude+condensate production from EIA (teal), and Oil and Gas Journal crude oil production estimate (dark red). Each series has the 13 month centered moving averages of each line, recursed once. Click to enlarge. Graphs are not zero-scaled. See below for sources.

Global marketed primary energy production 1970-2050. Expressed in thermal equivalent of millions of barrels/oil day (ie electricity streams such as hydro or photovoltaic are treated as if they had been converted from fuel at 38% efficiency). Source: BP for fossil fuel, hydro, and nuclear data, EIA and IEA for renewable data, and author's calculations as described in the text for projections. This is a scenario not a forecast.

Biofuel capacity or production as a fraction of food supply for three different cases, along with sigmoidal (ie logistic) projections, 1998-2018. Plum curves show US corn ethanol processing capacity in service or under construction as a fraction of ethanol potential of entire US corn crop. Brown curve shows actual production of US ethanol as a fraction of ethanol potential of US corn crop. Violet curve shows global biofuel production as a fraction of estimate of biofuel potential of entire global human food supply. Sigmoidal curves all have K = 1/3 (infection doubling time of three years), and cross the 50% line at 2008, 2010.8 and 2014.2 respectively. Sigmoids are scenarios, not forecasts. Actual biofuel production growth will depend heavily on oil prices and policy responses to increasing food prices. See text for sources and methods.

New liquids capacity with first oil in each year as estimated from Petroleum Review megaproject reports (last available estimate in each case), and interim estimates from Wikipedia table as of December 10th, 2007. Error bars on Petroleum Review figures are as documented in Is the Decline of Base Production Accelerating.

Normalized histogram of residuals from moving average for EIA and IEA total liquids production, Jan 2002-Oct 2007, together with standard normal distribution, and cumulative probability function for normal. October IEA residual value is emphasized with construction lines and label.

Year-on-year change in centered moving average of Russian oil production according to three data sources: EIA Table 1.1c, IEA Table 3, and JODI. Black line is an extrapolation of the current trend and is a scenario, not a forecast