FSU Editorial: "Declining Net Oil Exports" by Jeffrey J. Brown 09/14/2007

DECLINING NET OIL EXPORTS VERSUS "NEAR RECORD HIGH" CRUDE OIL INVENTORIES: WHAT IS GOING ON?
by Jeffrey J. Brown
September 14, 2007

Building on prior work by Matt Simmons and Kenneth Deffeyes, I have written a number of articles on Net Oil Exports, often with my frequent co-author, “Khebab,” most recently, “Net Oil Exports and the Iron Triangle.” We are going to present a quantitative assessment of future net exports by the top net exporters at the ASPO-USA (Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas) conference in October, in Houston, Texas, and we will be doing a preview of the paper in late September.

Above the fold was a graph of the Export Land Model (ELM), for a hypothetical net exporter, showed peak exports to net importer status in nine years. (For a better explanation of the meaning of that chart, check out this post.)

It’s interesting that the UK and Indonesia showed even sharper net export declines, going from peak recent net exports to net importer status in seven years and eight years respectively. The ELM and the UK and Indonesia case histories showed that net export declines tend to accelerate with time.

Note that the early data for Saudi Arabia are showing a similar pattern. The 2005 to 2006 numbers for Saudi Arabia are as follows (exponential increase/decrease per year, EIA, Total Liquids):

Production: -3.7%/year
Consumption: +5.7%/year
Net Exports: -5.5%/year

Extrapolating from year to date numbers, my estimates for 2006 to 2007 Saudi numbers are as follows (I am adding in some increased liquids consumption, because of their ongoing natural gas shortfall):

Production: -5.6%/year
Consumption: +10%/year
Net Exports: -9.5%/year

In addition, EIA data show an overall decline in net world exports from 2005 to 2006 that appears to be continuing into 2007.

Given this decline in net exports, It’s interesting that we have “near record high” crude oil inventories in the US, based on the five year range of crude oil inventories. In my opinion, the five year range for US crude oil inventories, as an indication of what is going on in oil markets, is highly misleading.

First, the industry has clearly gone to a Just In Time inventory system. In the Eighties, the industry maintained much higher crude oil inventories, especially in terms of Days of Supply, which have fallen to about 21 Days of Supply currently, from about 29 Days of Supply in September, 1982.

Second, we need to evaluate crude oil inventories based on Days of Supply in excess of Minimum Operating Level (MOL). In the US, the MOL for crude oil is probably about 270 million barrels (mb). At about 322 mb, US crude oil inventories are probably best characterized by Hours of Supply in excess of MOL (about 80 hours). In my opinion, recent fluctuations in US crude oil inventories merely reflect minor changes in a thin margin of supply in excess of MOL.

Refiners are unlikely to let their inventories drop below certain critical levels, and given the expectation of declining world oil exports, refiners will have two choices: (1) Bid the price up enough to keep their inventories up and/or (2) Reduce their crude oil input, thus reducing product output.

My contention is that instead of focusing on crude oil inventories, we need to focus on world net exports, crude oil prices, refinery utilization, product prices and product inventories.

I expect to see crude oil exports trending down, crude oil prices trending up, refinery utilization trending down, product prices trending up, and product inventories trending down.

Jeffrey J. Brown graduated from Texas A&M University with a B.S. in Geophysics. He is a member of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, and he is a licensed Professional Geoscientist in the State of Texas.

Since the early Eighties, he has worked as an exploration geoscientist, primarily in Texas, but with some exploration work in Australia and in other basins in the United States, and he has found several commercial oil and gas fields. He is currently managing an aggressive exploration program looking for "leftover" oil and gas fields in West Central Texas.

Because of Matt Simmons' early work, and based on work by Kenneth Deffeyes, he has been studying the Peak Oil issue for several years, with particular emphasis on peak exports, versus peak production.

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Jeffrey J. Brown
Dallas, Texas USA
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