UK does not expect global oil production to peak before 2030
Regional-UK, Economics, 7/18/2006

Britain does not expect global oil production to start to decline for at least another 25 year, according to Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks.

"The government consider that the world's oil resources are sufficient to prevent global total oil production peaking before 2030," Wicks said.

"The exact levels and years of the peaks in global conventional and total oil production will depend on assumptions about a number of factors," he said in a written parliamentary reply published Tuesday.

The various factors were said to include 'the rate of global oil demand growth, the rate of investment in the global oil sector and technological developments in finding and producing oil'.

In its 2005 World Energy Outlook, the Paris-based International Energy Agency had forecast in its reference case scenario that global oil demand will reach 115.4 million barrel per day by 2030, nearly 40 percent higher than current levels.

Wicks said the UK Government are already putting in place policies that will 'help ease the UK economy away from power supplied primarily through fossil fuels and is also promoting international efforts'.

Last year, the UK became a net importer of crude oil (including natural gas liquids and feedstocks), on an annual volume basis, for the first time since 1992.

But the energy minister indicated that he was optimistic that the UK will temporarily return to be a net exporter of crude next year with the huge Buzzard Field in the North Sea due on-stream but again become a net importer on a substantial basis by 2010.

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