Monitoring Peak Oil Number 1

Many people believe that oil production will soon achieve its peak. Some people believe that global oil production has already peaked. Regardless of individual opinions regarding the subject, if oil production starts to decline and it is not replaced by other energy sources at a greater rate than that of its loss, the global economy will enter a period of recession. The length and severity of the recession will depend, again, on the finding of new oil or the replacement of the oil loss by alternative energy sources.

The intention of this series is to provide an easy access to internet surfers to the latest reports on global oil production. I am obtaining the data from Oil Market Report, published by the International Energy Agency. The production figures are expressed in million of barrels per day.


Jan-05 83.95
Feb-05 84.45
Mar-05 84.89
Apr-05 84.89
May-05 85.31
Jun-05 84.87
Jul-05 84.48
Aug-05 84.77
Sep-05 84.07
Oct-05 84.09
Nov-05 84.86
Dec-05 84.65
Jan-06 84.29
Feb-06 84.44
Mar-06 84.72
Apr-06 85.21
May-06 84.79
Jun-06 84.98
Jul-06 86.13
Aug-06 85.52
Sep-06 85.14
Oct-06 85.35
Nov-06 85.39
Dec-06 85.45

According to this data, oil production seems to have peaked in July of 2006. However, as peak oil "experts" say, we would be able to identify the peak oil production some time after it had actually occured. There are many variables, like the finding of new oil fields, the production of oil from sources like tar sands and the arbitrary OPEC production quotas.

I will try to update this information in a monthly basis.