There was a good article by Daniel Jones today, highlighting the key points of the most recent EIA STEO. He covers the projected decrease in US oil production, which is now behaving along the lines he (and others to include me) expected.
The point is, US oil production is now projected to decline by amounts that are very material compared to the excess of supply over demand. Daniel walks away from the consumption projections. I have been curious about the EIA projections of consumption for China, and so I did some reality testing. Here's what the EIA sees:
Oil consumption in China is projected to increase by 0.32 million barrels per day from 2015 to 2016.
The thought occurred to me, what about all those new cars that are being sold in China? Presumably they will be driven, and consequently burn gasoline, which will be refined from crude oil. Here's how I did the math:
I see an inconsistency: to make the two figures agree would require drastic revision of the number of cars sold, their average mileage driven, mpg, etc. I got the sales figures from an article on-line, here. As far as the assumptions made in the spreadsheet, and the mathematical operations thereon, please tell me if I'm wrong.