Chinese and Indian crude oil imports will almost quadruple by 2030, creating a supply “crunch” as soon as 2015, the International Energy Agency said.

China will replace the U.S. as the world’s largest energy user early next decade and its oil demand will more than double to 16.5 million barrels a day by 2030, led by a seven-fold increase in Chinese car ownership, the IEA said. Together, China and India account for almost half of a projected 55 percent increase in world energy demand, the IEA estimated in its World Energy Outlook.

Oil investments of $5.3 trillion will be needed as new sources race slowing output from old wells, the IEA said. A 61 percent surge in crude prices this year to a record over $98 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange may be just the start, it said.

“A supply-side crunch in the period to 2015, involving an abrupt escalation in oil prices, cannot be ruled out,” the Paris-based adviser to 26 oil importing nations said in its 674- page report.

An average field decline of 3.7 percent per year means 12.5 million barrels of new production, more than the current output of Saudi Arabia, needs to be added between 2012 and 2015 to make up for a drop in production and new demand, the IEA said. Even a slight increase in the rate of decline would “eat up most of the world’s current spare oil production capacity,” the group said. “Any shortfall in net capacity growth could result in a sharp escalation of prices.”

China and India’s combined imports will surge to 19.1 million barrels of oil a day by 2030 from 5.4 million barrels of oil a day in 2006, the report said in its so-called “reference scenario” for oil demand. That’s more than today’s combined oil imports of Japan and the U.S., the largest energy user.

Supply Forecast Maintained

The IEA maintained projections for oil production reaching as much as 116 million barrels of oil a day by 2030, up from about 85 million barrels a day today. Even 100 million barrels a day may be “optimistic,” Total SA Chief Executive Officer Christophe de Margerie and the chairman of Libya’s state oil company, Shokri Ghanem, said last week.

“The world’s oil reserves are sufficient to meet demand until 2030, although the cost of supply will increase,” Nobuo Tanaka, the IEA’s executive director, said at a conference in London on Oct. 30, when asked if he was being overly optimistic. “It’s an unprecedented challenge.”

Russia and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, home to as much as 82 percent of oil reserves according to statistics from BP Plc, will account for a larger share of production. They may withhold investment, the IEA said in its report. World oil production averaged 85 million barrels a day in September, with OPEC supplying 42 percent of that.

Higher Rent

“The greater the increase in the call on oil and gas from these regions, the more likely it will be that they will seek to extract a higher rent from their exports and to impose higher prices in the longer term by deferring investment and constraining production,” the IEA wrote in its report.

OPEC’s share of world oil production will rise to 52 percent of production by 2030, the IEA said. So-called non- conventional oil sources, such as extra heavy oils, tar sands and natural gas-to-liquids sources, will quadruple to 8.5 million barrels of oil a day from 1.8 million barrels of oil a day in 2006, the IEA said.

The IEA’s report this year focuses on how China and India, the world’s fastest growing energy users, are reshaping the industry. The agency was set up in 1974 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to coordinate energy policy after an Arab oil embargo. It has broadened its membership as developing and plans to add Slovakia and Poland as members.

Economic Growth

Record oil prices will probably push up U.S. inflation only marginally in coming months while having little impact on global economic growth, International Monetary Fund researchers Kevin Cheng and Valerie Mercer-Blackman wrote in a report on Nov. 5.

Efforts to boost supply will spur demand for deep-sea oil rig companies, such as GlobalSantaFe Corp., the offshore oil and gas driller being acquired by Transocean Inc., said Don Hodges, who manages about $1.1 billion at Hodges Capital Management in Dallas.

“It all points to a shortage of rigs, and those companies that have the rigs are in an enviable position,” Hodges, who has shares of both Transocean and GlobalSantaFe, said Nov. 5.

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