How do oil producers respond to oil demand shocks ? ✯

This paper analyzes the response of international oil producers to demand-induced changes in the real price of oil during 1975–2011. The goal is to disentangle fluctuations in OPEC and non-OPEC production and to derive consistent estimates of the short-run price elasticity of crude oil supply at the country level. I find that oil producers hardly respond to demand shocks within the same month, and that the corresponding impact price elasticities of supply are not statistically different from zero. Although there is little evidence of a systematic response following a typical flow demand shock, the medium-run responses to a speculative demand shock differ between OPEC and non-OPEC producers, i.e., on average over the sample period, OPEC members seem to curtail production, whereas non-OPEC supply expands significantly. Flow and speculative demand shocks account for a non-negligible fraction of the total variability in country-level crude oil production.