My two last posts were trying to forecast future oil exportation for Saudi Arabia and Iran based on a population driven growth of domestic demand. I believe that demographic pressure is ultimately determining the long term trend in oil consumption (assuming a constant lifestyle). The US is the top oil importer with imports near 15 mbpd in 2004. Like most of the western countries, the US population growth is modest with a fertility rate around 2.0 and a population that could reach 420 million in 2050 (Note that Hispanics count for almost one-half of population growth) .
If we look at the quantity of oil consumed per capita (Figure 2), the trend seems to be linear since the 80s with 24.5 barrels/capita/year and a slight increase of 1.5 barrels/capita/year every 15 years (the oil comsumption data is from the 2004 BP energy review ).
Problem is that the US domestic oil production is declining rapidly since the 1970 production peak predicted by King Hubbert. On Figure 3, we added the result of the Particle Filtering based on a Stochasctic Bass Model (SBM-PF) which gives an Ultimate Recoverable Ressource around 230 Gb (logistic growth rate K=6%).
If we combine the first order model for the consumption per capita (Figure 2) and the predicted US production on Figure 3 we can try to predict future importation levels (Figure 4).
If oil consumption stays strong in the US and grows to 22 mbpd in 2010, the oil imports could reach 17 mbpd (80%) in 2010 and 20 mbpd in 2015 (85%).
peak+oil oil+production oil US US economy GDP