The graphs show only incremental crude oil production relative to January 2001 with data from http://www.eia.doe.gov/ipm/supply.html
Updated 11/7/2010
Production profiles can be stacked in many different ways, from bottom
Fig 1c: decline wedge first, then peaking, Saudi Arabia, growing , Venezuela and Iraq on top
Fig 1d: for detailed description, see http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?p=1149
Fig 7: Details of growing group, in August 2008 BTC pipeline attack, conflict in Georgia, later technical problems in the ACG oil field. Angola, Brazil, Kazachstan and Azerbaijan are the only 4 countries who managed growth (around 600 Kb/d) since July 2008. All are dependent on offshore oil.
OPEC: Saudi Arabia could not produce more oil in the boom year 2008 than in 2005
We can clearly see the gradual decline of Non-OPEC after 2004, although there was a recent recovery, mainly from the US rebouncing from hurricanes. Russia and other growing countries lifted the production by around 2 mb/d to its peak in 2004-2005.
Let’s now stack OPEC on top of Non-OPEC
The subsystem excluding Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Angola (which joined OPEC in December 2006) has peaked in 2005/06. And looking at the subsystem excluding Angola we see that Saudi Arabia was not able to lift production to 2005 levels. So Saudi Arabia has become a “negative” swing producer which can no longer supply all oil needed but which can afford to reduce production when demand decreases (as happened in the 2nd half of 2008). In the worst case scenario, the mid 2008 Saudi spike was a one off event, sitting on a declining base wedge.