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in—and in a way it doesn't look good for the United States. h e
International Energy Agency has projected that demand for oil from
the developing world will rise from about thirty-two million barrels
a day in 2008 to forty-one million barrels a day in 2020; developed
world demand, meanwhile, is projected to fall by only a quarter as
much. Other projections yield similar results. h e net result is a mas-
sive new market to divvy up, particularly if no big steps are taken to
curtail the world's thirst for oil.
h is was all at the front of my mind when I arrived at OPEC head-
quarters in Vienna on a cool spring day in 2012. OPEC's inl uence has
waxed and waned, but with nearly half of world oil production within
its member countries' borders, and a far higher fraction of the world's
cheap crude, it still mat ers. Abdallah Salem el-Badri, a former Libyan
oil minister and at the time the secretary general of OPEC, welcomed
me warmly. Trained at Florida Southern University, the onetime Esso
Standard manager was by then seventy-one and reaching the end of his
i ve-year term. I asked him how he felt about the boom in U.S. oil and gas
production and was a bit taken aback by his reply. “h is is really good,”
he told me. Since Richard Nixon, the United States has obsessed over
its dependence on Middle Eastern oil; rising U.S. oil output could get
OPEC of the hook. “h ey will blame us less,” he predicted. “Look at the
[U.S. presidential] campaign,” which was just warming up at the time.
“Fit y percent of it is about energy!” I pressed el-Badri on whether OPEC
could weather growth in U.S. supplies. He was sanguine. “Yes, for us, it
is important,” he acknowledged. “But there is room for everybody.”
He's probably right. In the short run, it's entirely possible the world
will overinvest in oil production, leading to a temporary price crash if
producers aren't able to hold back. But there seem to be few limits so
far to the world's thirst for oil over the long haul. And even though
crude output in United States, Canada, and Brazil is on the rise, it is
declining in countries such as Norway, China, and the United Kingdom.
Rapid turnarounds in producers from Iraq to Venezuela could quickly
alter the picture, as could a persistently weak Chinese economy, let ing
U.S. oil output tip the i nal balance, but it would be unwise to bet on
it. Let ing U.S. production rise would help keep a lid on prices, which
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