Does anyone have this data going as far back as decades ago?I'm interested mainly in the rate of growth of demand compared to rate of growth in supply
alot of supply information out there is misleading for a few reasons mainly due to the fact that oil price hasn't stayed at a high enough level for mass scale production of petroleum from tar sands to become commercially feasible on a massive scale. If all of canada's tar sands were to be converted to petroleum then that would make 1 Trillion barrels of potential oil, easily eclipsing the sizes of ghawar, Burgan and Zakum Fields combined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_fields has a list of oil fields and their approximate proven reserves. Note that many will have much less than is currently estimated especially ghawar as arab governments put a tight lid on it. Notice also oil shale and Tar sands which can all be converted to petroleum in a commercially viable manner if the oil price hits above US70-80 per barrel, hence putting a cap on global oil prices
Sure, but who is willing to pay to make it happen?Canada is on the kyoto protocol and Shell already said Alberta sands emmits 25% more greenhouse gases than saudi oil. They will have to pay to cut this down. Plus the extraction process requires huge amounts of natural gas. Royal/Dutch and Shell are paying huge salaries in order to have these operations going. All of this and they get a what?1.0 mbd. It would take not just a high price of oil but then YEARS of building infrastructure and investment there in order to increase supply from tar sands in a way that could damp the price. I mean really even if you were optimistic about them growing supply it would need to offset all the declining oil fields in the world(pretty much all the meaninful existing oil fields) AND offset all the demand that is compouding every year(even with the alternative fuel craze)
I don't have decades of data, but 2005 was the first year when the growth of demand outpaced the growth of supply. Try asking the folks at theoildrum.com