Currently lower oil prices due to a combination of increasing oil supplies and subdued demand come at a high cost to the environment and the climate. Additional oil supplies are exclusively from fracking tight oil in the US and from Canadian tar sands. Fig 1: Production of US tight oil, Canadian tar sands and rest-of-world crude The graph shows that crude oil production outside the US and Canada is on a bumpy plateau since 2005. In fact, after 2011, rest-of-world crude production declined like in 2005-2007: Fig 2: Overlay of rest-of-world crude production 2005/07 and 2012/14 periods Let’s have a more detailed look at the changes to crude oil production since 2001: Fig 3: Incremental crude oil production Jan 2001 – Aug 2014 All data are from here: http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm Incremental production is calculated as total crude production minus the minimum production in each country in the period under consideration, […]