As the picture is starting to develop for global oil supplies this winter many of the discussions seems to focus on the overall size of the demand/supply levels. And when you are talking about numbers on the order of 85 mbd a variation of 100,000 bd is not a very large number. Thus the seeming risks of small changes in production are not evident.
However if we focus more narrowly on the likely difference in range between available supply and overall demand, then the range between potential oversupply and shortage is somewhere in the region of 1 mbd or less ... a hundred thousand barrels here, a hundred thousand there. Pretty soon it adds up to a real shortage.
For while the major members that can increase oil production in OPEC are doing so, their number is small and some cannot increase at all, and others are declining. In this context, the recent announcement from Iraq is the most troubling ...