We use the period starting with January 2010 when crude production had come back to 2005 levels after the exceptional year of 2009. Fig 1: US crude oil vs crude oil in rest-of-world While US shale oil production is growing, there was a drop in crude production in the rest of world since February 2012 of almost 2 million barrels/d. How did this come about? As usual, there is decline and growth and then we have geopolitics. The following graphs show how much is contributed by whom. Incremental oil production is calculated as monthly oil production minus the minimum monthly production in a given period: Fig 2: Incremental Saudi crude production (yellow area) in relation to total production This is an example how incremental production is defined. The drop in Saudi production in the last quarter of 2012 and 1st half of 2013 has not been explained. There is usually […]