After a delay of several months the US Energy Information Administration has published the latest international energy statistics Fig 1: World’s incremental crude oil production How Fig 1 is created: for each country, the minimum production in the period Jan 2001 (original IPS start month) to October 2015 is taken (=base production) and deducted from the country’s total production, giving the incremental production which is then stacked in a way that allows to interpret which changes occurred. The stacking order is: (a) Base production (b) Countries with growing production (c) Countries with flat, peaking or declining production (d) OPEC and Middle East countries (e) Canada (mainly tar sands) (f) United States (mainly shale oil) The numbers denote following events: (1) Venezuela strike (2) Iraq peak oil war (3) Saudi production declines (4) High demand for China Olympic Games (5) Iran sanctions introduced (6) Iraq reaches pre-war production level (7) […]