ABSTRACT
The Pacific Rim petroleum markets are large and are growing about twice as fast as markets in the Atlantic Basin. The two-trend approach to predicting the future path of oil prices has been developed in an attempt to understand how supply and demand balances might differ if prices follow different basic trends. Natural gas consumption will grow rapidly in the rest of the Asia-Pacific region outside of Japan, Australia, and New Zealand because of the rapid development of natural gas resources, particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. In general, energy consumption is expected to grow about twice as fast as oil consumption throughout the world as other forms of energy are developed. Once the conventional oil is exhausted, unconventional oil resources must be explored. Unconventional oil includes heavy oil, extra-heavy oil, bitumens, tar sands, and shale oil.
