If oil demand does grow as much in the nineties as the higher current projections suggest, where should the industry produce the extra oil? None of the items raised in the IEW polls of expert expectations about oil mentioned in the last chapter, as it happened, ever directly addressed this fundamental question about the supply side of the business. Their projections of world oil prices, usually considered the most important samplings in those polls, imply opinions about it, at least indirectly. But expectations regarding prices have no necessary relation to supply costs. The IEW polls did often include questions specifically about oil demand upon Opec, which was of critical importance in the seventies and eighties. But they never asked their experts specifically about the supply expected from the Middle East, which will remain more fundamental to world oil prices as well as supply for much longer, whatever becomes of Opec.

Chapter 10 of this book considered the medium-term world supply prospects of conventional oil and the energy forms that will succeed it, and concluded that no real threat of medium-run scarcity is visible. But notwithstanding global reassurances for the medium term, this industry has to take shorter views about one crucial question of supply. This question is not global, but localised geographically and politically. It has been exercising most oil producers since the mid-eighties. Is oil production outside Opec already passing its peak? How much can non-Opec producers maintain for how long?

This question remains as important for producers inside Opec as for those outside. All constantly scrutinise the indications that total non-Opec supply has already levelled off and may soon begin declining (Figure 12.1).