Incredible "Talking Paper" on North American Energy -- Citi Sponsored -- Energy 2020

Updates

April 3, 2012: a rebuttal to the CITI paper.

Gasoline prices remain high, and Reuters recently noted that there are enough countries with civil unrest, technical problems and bad weather that there are around a million barrels a day of possible supply that are not getting to the market. Yet with Saudi Arabia continuing to reassure that it is willing to pump more oil, if needed, there appears to be, superficially, little cause for supply concerns this year. By the same token, in the longer term, concerns over supply also seem to be increasingly discounted. For example Citigroup has just released a new report on Energy 2020:North America as the new Middle East (same link as in the original post). The report suggests that there is really no concern with future supplies of oil and gas.

I would argue that the numbers for Saudi Arabia and Russia are difficult to realistically justify. For the Kingdom, which is reported to be producing 9.9 mbd, to increase production by another 2 mbd is optimistic, given the ageing of their primary fields and the decline in remaining volumes that I will discuss in future posts in the current series on that country. The projection of an increase in Russian production is a similar concern. With the decline in production from Western Siberia there is not enough new production coming from Timan-Pechora and Eastern Siberia to sustain existing levels let alone see an increase in production – a point that has been made by Russian officials in the past. However the real concern lies with the relatively unrealistic image that is being projected for US production over the next eight years.

The article continues; go to the link.

Original Post

This is, without question, the best overview of the status of the energy picture in North America. A huge thank you to "anon 1" for sending this link. I would have missed it.

It's a long, long PDF. I haven't read it all yet but I've scrolled through it and it will be great weekend reading.

Titled "Energy 2020," it's sponsored by CITI.