THE REAL ENERGY CRISIS: WHEN WILL IT COME?

This study attempts to forecast Non-Communist World (NCW) oil supply and demands for the periods 1976-1990 and 1990-2005. This study indicates that an oil shortage before the late 1980's is unlikely. An oil shortage thereafter is a possibility but not a probability and a gradual transition, accompanied by moderate real price increases, over the next 25-30 years, from oil to non-oil sources to meet incremental world energy requirements is more likely than an extended oil shortage of crisis proportions. Alternative assumptions are made of projected economic growth rates as expressed in terms of GNP and the "energy/economic growth coefficient: (E/GNP ratio) which relates movements in real GNP to movements in energy consumption. Non-oil energy supplies outside the U.S. world oil resources, non-Communist World oil demand, physical availability of required demand, and oil supplies and prices from OPEC and non-OPEC sources are discussed. With respect to the post-1990 period it is noted that the ultimate amount of recoverable conventional oil still in the ground will be substantial at the beginning of the new period (1990) than it was at the beginning of the previous one (1977); and, the global economic, political and technological forces set into motion since 1974 to conserve energy and develop alternate sources in order to reduce the growth in NCW oil demand in the 1990's below the rate prevailing in the 1980's.