UK chancellor calls out non-OPEC oil producers

Gordon Brown: ``You need either to have an agreement on increased production capacity from the OPEC countries or we've got to provide increased production elsewhere''


But there's a problem... despite high prices, non-OPEC, non-former Soviet Union world oil production is past peak. (Graphic shows date of peak for each country, note US was 1971)

Sounds like the U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is giving a verbal alert that the notion non-OPEC, non-former Soviet Union oil production is past peak must be tested. Has the failure of OPEC to deliver sufficient swing production after months of market tightness and the recent blow to US oil production from Hurricane Katrina created an emergency that is bigger than even release of contingency stockpiles around the world can handle? Time will tell.

Brown has been at the center of G7 deliberations on the world oil situation. Frustration with Russia and the OPEC countries has been evident for some time on the matter of ``transparency'' of oil reserves and field-by-field production data. Please see Deep Blade posts here and here for more details.

Meanwhile, Brown should probably explain further that precipitous decline in North Sea production rates has set in since 1999. Please see the ASPO Newsletter for August 2002 for an assessment of oil in the UK itself.