The Pacific Basin oil market is poised for its biggest wave of new regional crude in a decade but it will be a last-gasp effort far too meagre to offset waning output from other fields in their sunset years.
The fading profile of Asian oil will be cushioned by a slug of new crude from eastern Russia. Oilfields producing more than 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) in Australia, Malaysia and India are due to come onstream in the next two years. Asia now produces just under 10 per cent of the world's oil, but consumes about 30 per cent of it.
While these fields in theory provide more competition to rising imports from Africa and the Caspian - they are unlikely even to balance the loss of output from the rapidly ageing fields in countries such as Australia and Indonesia. "It will slow down the overall decline, but it won't be enough to prevent it," said Noel Tomnay, Principal Consultant with Wood Mackenzie in Singapore.