World Oil Balance Charts

[MDimitri]

I have a few sites I am a member of while monitoring Futures and Options and this is one I check frequently. I found a great chart, published quarterly, on Global oil demand and supply. Have a look.

http://omrpublic.iea.org/balances.asp

In the last 4 years Oil demand has gone up but but no where near as much as anylists keep reporting... have a look at the site you will see that there has been about a 2-2.6% increase in global demand, in some parts there has been a decrease. So as for the large spike since last year in April to now, there is no real correlation of evidence supporting the hike in prices. No wars, no earthquakes, no storms...etc. The conflict in Iraq has been taken into consideration and the amount of oil being pumped from there is so negligible it is not even counted. If and when Iraq gets back on it's feet again it should be able to tap into it's reported 120Billion barrels of oil, over 90% of which is still underground.

Read this:
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), "Iraq holds more than 112 billion barrels of oil - the world's second largest proven reserves. Iraq also contains 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and is a focal point for regional and international security issues."

Iraq's Oil Reserves: Untapped Potential
While its proven oil reserves of 112 billion barrels ranks Iraq second in the work behind Saudi Arabia, EIA estimates that up to 90-percent of the county remains unexplored due to years of wars and sanctions. Unexplored regions of Iraq could yield an additional 100 billion barrels. Iraq's oil production costs are among the lowest in the world. However, only about 2,000 wells have been drilled in Iraq, compared to about 1 million wells in Texas alone.

Iraqi Oil Production
Shortly after its failed 1990 invasion of Kuwait and imposition of resulting trade embargos, Iraq's oil production fell from 3.5 million barrels per day to around 300,000 barrels per day. By February 2002, Iraqi oil production had recovered to about 2.5 million barrels per day. Iraqi officials had hoped to increase the country's oil production capacity to 3.5 million barrels per day by the end of 2000, but did not accomplish this given technical problems with Iraqi oil fields, pipelines, and other oil infrastructure. Iraq also claims that oil production capacity expansion has been constrained by refusal of the United Nations to provide Iraq with all the oil industry equipment it has requested.

EIA's oil industry experts generally assess Iraq's sustainable production capacity at no higher than about 2.8-2.9 million barrels per day, with net export potential of around 2.3-2.5 million barrels per day. In comparison, Iraq produced 3.5 million barrels per day in July 1990, prior to its invasion of Kuwait.

Here is a website for those interested in following this a bit more.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynami...iraqchron.html

Shedding Some Light on this issue.

Cheers!