15 Charts That Should Terrify Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia needs high oil prices to function — Below $80 and the kingdom starts getting into trouble.
But more and more people are switching to natural gas.
That's because it's so cheap. Since 2010, natural gas prices have fallen 28 percent. Rising demand will cause prices to rebound, but it'll be slow going to get off record lows.
Gas' share of the world energy mix is surging. Oil's is falling.
According to BP, gas could actually surpass oil sometime after 2030.
And Saudi Arabia is not the Middle East's big gas player.
Iran currently leads the region.
Meanwhile, the world needs less and less oil to grow.
We just don't need as much oil anymore.
Even in China, oil demand is stalling.
Other Asian countries are showing the same.
Meanwhile, fuel economy is on the rise in America.
Kleinman and Morse also point out stricter standards in China and Japan are coming in 2015.
So oil demand is flat lining.
Kleinman and Morse also capture the effect rising fuel efficiency will have.
The other big story is America's energy boom.
It's actually on pace to match and possibly even exceed Saudi liquid fuels production.
Saudi oil exports to the US have yet to recover from last decade's highs.
What's more, U.S. imports from OPEC — of which the Saudis are the largest member — may be down for good.
Texas alone would now rank as 13th-largest oil producer in the world.
They now produce about 2.3 million barrels of oil a day, or a third of all U.S. production.
Last year, we were more energy self-sufficient than we've been since 1991.
We produced domestically 83.2 percent of the total energy we consumed.
US production will soon outpace imports.
That hasn't happened in nearly 20 years.
The EIA recently revised upward its estimates for recoverable oil thanks to fracking.
Gas too.
But we may not even need it in the coming decades.
The EIA predicts our fossil fuel consumption will fall 4 points by 2040, largely at the expense of renewables.
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