The “Syrian Sickness”: What Crude Oil Gives, Crude Oil Can Take Back.
One of these rapid cycles of growth and decline is that of Syria. It is a country that never became a major world producer, less than 1% of the world’s total production when it peaked, around 1995. (graph below, from Gail Tverberg’s blog). For the small Syrian economy, however, even this limited amount was important
The Syruan oil production went through its unavoidable cycle over a span of little more than three decade. Depletion generated progressively higher production costs and that led to a scarcity of capital investments to keep production increasing. The result was the “bell shaped” production curve that is often called the “Hubbert curve”. Eventually, around 2011, the internal consumption curve crossed the production curve and that transformed the country from an oil exporter to an oil importer. The cross-over point corresponded to the start of the civil war.
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