http://www.aspo-global.org/newsletter/ASPOGlobal_Newsletter77.pdf
Notes: The pdf file opens the May, 2007 ASPO Newsletter.
ASPO publishes monthly updates, a free service. They periodically include links to opposing views, e.g. article by Cambridge Energy Research Associates. [To see CERA article, return to Guest Authors].
Summarizing the debate, ASPO expects that oil production [including natural gas liquids] will increase only slightly above the present quantity of approximately 85 million barrels per day. The peak is expected to occur in the vicinity of 2011 or 2012
Peak oil will only be confirmed several years past the event, which brings one closer to evaluation of former Princeton professor Ken Deffeyes' estimate that peak oil occurred in December, 2005.
CERA, on the contrary, estimates that the production peak is 30 to 40 years away, and that production will have in the meantime climbed to 125 million barrels per day. Their estimates tend to be in accord with those of industry.
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Historically, Mexico has been one of the chief suppliers of US oil. However, production at Mexico' largest oil field, Cantarell, is declining rapidly :
Mexico - Cantarell crashing
Peak Oil Review , Mon 29 January, 2007
On Friday PEMEX made it official. Production from Mexico's largest oilfield, Cantarell, fell from 1.99 million b/d in January 2006 to 1.44 million b/d in December. The company's overall crude production in December was 2.98 million b/d, falling below 3 million barrels for the first time in six years. Nearly a year ago, a leaked internal PEMEX study forecast that under the best-case scenario Cantarell's production would fall to 1.54 million barrels a day by the end of 2006 -- almost exactly what happened.
Mexican oil analyst, David Shields, expects the field's output to drop another 600,000 barrels a day by the end of this year. He says that Pemex will likely increase output by 200,000 barrels a day at other fields -- leaving the country with a net decline of 400,000 barrels a day by year's end.
The sudden crash of production from Cantarell has serious implications for the US and Mexican economies. Mexico derives 37 percent of its federal budget from PEMEX's profits. Last year, revenue from the nation's crude exports reached an all-time high of $34.7 billion. In 2005 Mexico exported 1.82 million b/d mostly to the US. By last month exports had fallen to 1.53 million b/d and will obviously continue to drop during 2007 and beyond as production drops and the growing Mexican economy continues to demand more fuel.
Mexico has already warned US crude importers that it will be unable to fulfill some existing contracts. US imports from Mexico could drop by over a million barrels a day between 2005 and the end of next year. A loss of this magnitude will be very difficult and probably expensive to make up through purchases on the international market.
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OIL-MEXICO: Severe Withdrawal Symptoms Ahead (IPS, Thursday, 25 Jan. 2007)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36306
Mexico is as addicted to oil as heroin addicts are to their next fix: the country depends on oil for a large proportion of its energy needs, consumes it at an unsustainable rate and goes into debt to obtain it. Unless it changes its behaviour or finds a therapy that works, the prognosis is that it will experience a serious crisis.
The problem is enormous, analysts told IPS. Mexico produces 3.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude, making it the sixth world producer; it exports 1.8 million bpd, and owns one of the 10 largest oil companies, the state monopoly Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) -- but it is teetering on the edge of an abyss, they said.
Local oil reserves are expected to last only nine years and eight months at current rates of production, according to precise calculations by experts, whereas in 2000 they were forecast to last 20 years and seven months. Besides, PEMEX is bankrupt.
PEMEX has debts greater than its total assets, is undertaking very little exploration, its extraction costs are rising steadily, and most of its revenues go straight into the state coffers to finance 36.1 percent of the national budget, twice the proportion that it contributed 20 years ago...
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See also: Mexico - Latest Total oil Supply (production) from IEA (International Energy Agency, 13 Dec 2006)
http://omrpublic.iea.org/OECDresults.asp?OECDcountries=Mexico&oecdformat=%25&Submit=Submit
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