Abstract: U.S. and World Energy Outlook for 1980s

M. R. Thomasson

An assessment of energy supply and demand for the United States and the world to the year 1990, with results displayed as balanced volumetric energy flows disaggregated over the primary sources and major consuming sectors, shows that (1) between now and 1990 the world demand for oil will grow at 3.2% AAI, but U.S. primary oil consumption will grow at only 2.0% AAI; (2) most of the energy to be consumed in the U.S. over the projection period will be supplied as domestically produced fossil fuels; (3) oil imports will increase to about 10 MMBPD throughout the decade of the 1980s, coming more and more from OPEC; (4) coal will supply an increasingly greater fraction of total U.S. energy consumption, primarily in the utility and industrial sectors; (5) new sources of energy wi l be developed, but before 1990 will have only a small impact on total supply; (6) nuclear power, although growing less vigorously than estimated in past projections, will be very important to the nation's economy; and (7) the successful balancing of long-term U.S. energy futures is contingent on our ability to achieve significant reductions in energy-consumption growth rates.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90968©1977 AAPG-SEPM Annual Convention and Exhibition, Washington, DC