Via The New York Times, a very interesting article on how the economies of many big oil-exporting countries are growing so fast that their internal need for energy is reducing the amount they can sell abroad, adding new strains to the global oil market.  This growth, if it continues, would see several of the world’s most important suppliers need to start importing oil within a decade.  As the article notes:

“…Indonesia has already made this flip. By some projections, the same thing could happen within five years to Mexico, the No. 2 source of foreign oil for the United States, and soon after that to Iran, the world’s fourth-largest exporter. In some cases, the governments of these countries subsidize gasoline heavily for their citizens, selling it for as little as 7 cents a gallon, a practice that industry experts say fosters wasteful habits.

“It is a very serious threat that a lot of major exporters that we count on today for international oil supply are no longer going to be net exporters any more in 5 to 10 years,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an oil analyst at Rice University.

Rising internal demand may offset 40 percent of the increase in Saudi oil production between now and 2010, while more than half the projected decline in Iranian exports will be caused by internal consumption, said a recent report by CIBC World Markets.

The report said “soaring internal rates of oil consumption” in Russia, in Mexico and in member states of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries would reduce crude exports as much as 2.5 million barrels a day by the end of the decade.

…Internal oil consumption by the five biggest oil exporters — Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, Iran and the United Arab Emirates — grew 5.9 percent in 2006 over 2005, according to government data. Exports declined more than 3 percent. By contrast, oil demand is essentially flat in the United States.CIBC’s demand projections suggest that for many oil countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Libya, internal oil demand will double in a decade.

…Perhaps surprisingly, though, some producing countries have surpassed the United States in oil consumption per person. They include Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Particularly in oil-producing countries with large populations, like Indonesia, Russia and Mexico, a rapid rise in car ownership is a big factor driving consumption increases. Russian farmers are replacing horses and carts with gas-guzzling four-wheel-drive vehicles, while urban consumers are snapping up BMWs even before they learn to drive.

…Indonesia flipped from exporting oil to importing it three years ago because of sagging production in depleted fields and rising demand. Iran, Algeria and Malaysia are vulnerable in the next decade. Most oil experts view Mexico as the next country likely to flip, in as little as five years.”