by pup55 » Fri 03 Feb 2006, 09:33:36
There is no "official procedure". That's because the peak phenomenon is only known a few years after the fact.
When the US peaked, in the early 70's, in retrospect, it was signalled by the Texas Railroad Commission in their famous statement removing all production quotas. However, the significance of this was sort of overlooked at the time.
Normally what happens is that there are a couple of years of declining production, then the government puts "decline" into their forecasts, in kind of an offhand manner. So the big revalation, if there is one, comes when the government finally admits that they are no longer forecasting increased production every year. I think in the case of Norway, this happened a couple of years ago, and more or less nothing happened because at the time, there was plenty of oil around. If you read their public statements, they are still not too worried about it.
The next country to watch for is Mexico. there have already been statements by Pemex that Cantarell, their big gulf oilfield, is in decline. The last forecast I saw for Mexico said they were still increasing, as a nation, though. When they start to forecast declines every year, there will probably be an announcement.
As for OPEC, the saudis and Kuwaitis and most of the others are still forecasting increasing production every year, and they are still nominally sticking to production quotas. When they remove the quotas, which in essence they did last summer during the brief panic, this will be a sign. In fact, you can make the argument that once OPEC peaks, there will be no compelling reason for its existence, because at that point, each of the individual countries will have the power to control the market by restricting production.
Mr. Taskforce_unity has a good database on different countries which includes a lot of "official forecasts".
As for this issue of mass market panic when some nation announces that they have peaked, I think not, unless, per the above, Opec disbands.
Another way to look at this issue is to review the annual reports and other statements of each of the big oil companies: When the point comes that they are openly stating declining production, and telling their shareholders to expect more of the same in the future, you can be pretty sure that this will cause a lot of stress in the market.
If you want to go through and review the annual reports of the big oil companies, you can see where they fall on all of this: Exxon, BP, Total and ENI are still increasing, and Chevron and Shell are in decline. A lot of this is masked by all of the mergers, buyouts, buying reserves instead of finding them, etc. that we see all the time, but at some point all of this will settle down and some good information will come out of the annual reports.
So, if you are looking for some news item on CNN that says that the global peak has been passed, you are not going to get it. If you want a metaphor, what you are instead going to see is more like the famous show "wheel of fortune" where vanna turns over one letter at a time until it spells out "global peak in petroleum production". As in the game, different people are going to realize what the message is at different times and react accordingly. Also as in the game, you will be really surprised at how stupid some people will be right up until the very end.