I think we all have an incling that this is on the cards, especially the way fuel price is rocketing:
http://www.energybulletin.net/38948.htm
This theory is taken from the study above:
"Our simple mathematical model and recent case histories have shown that once oil production in an oil exporting country starts declining, the resulting decline in net oil exports can be quite rapid, and the oil exporter tends to show an accelerating net export decline rate.
We have used some additional mathematical methods to forecast future production and consumption for key oil exporting countries.
Our middle case forecast is that the top five net oil exporting countries, accounting for about half of world net oil exports, will approach zero net oil exports around 2031—going from peak net exports to zero in about 26 years, versus seven years and eight years respectively for the UK and Indonesia. In our opinion, the only real difference between the top five and the UK and Indonesia is that the top five net exporters in 2005 had a lower rate of consumption relative to production.
Extrapolating from year to date 2007 data, it appears likely that the top five will show an average aggregate net export decline of about one mbpd per year in both 2006 and 2007, putting them on track to go from about 23 mbpd in net exports in 2005 to close to zero in the 2030 time frame.
Smaller oil exporters like Angola can and will increase their net exports, but smaller exporters, just like smaller oil fields, tend to have sharper production peaks and more rapid net export declines than do the larger net exporters. And offsetting many of the gains by some smaller exporters will be sharp declines in net exports from other smaller exporters like Mexico, the #2 source of imported crude oil into the US, which will probably approach zero net oil exports by 2014.
Declining net oil exports will inevitably result, absent a severe decline in demand in importing countries, in continued rapid increases in oil prices, as oil importing countries furiously bid against each other for declining oil exports.
In simplest terms, we are concerned that the very lifeblood of the world industrial economy—net oil export capacity—is draining away in front of our very eyes, and we believe that it is imperative that major oil importing countries like the United States launch an emergency Electrification of Transportation program--electric light rail and streetcars--combined with a crash wind power program.
As Alan Drake has pointed out, the United States--with roughly 1/3rd its current population, 1/25th of its current inflation adjusted GDP and with primitive Technology --built subways in its largest cities and streetcars in 500 cities, towns and villages in just 20 years (1897-1916), which does not even take into account numerous interurban systems.
If we could do it in 1908 with mules, manual labor and with minimal fossil fuel input, why can't we do it 2008?
Look out, here it comes, the "The Mayan Prophecy...21st December 2012."
