BRINK

An oil-industry acronym for Brazil, Russia, Iraq, Nigeria and Kazakhstan – five countries predicted to make a significant mark on oil production in the 2010s.

Discussing the possible impact of an increase in oil supply, Liam Denningobserved in The Wall Street Journal:

Meanwhile, in a nod to the BRIC countries that helped define the last decade, consultants PFC Energy has coined its own acronym for the next: BRINK, or Brazil, Russia, Iraq, Nigeria and Kazakhstan.

Brazil has hosted a string of big discoveries, while Russia has defied expectations by overtaking Saudi Arabia’s output. Kazakhstan is expanding three major projects, while a tentative peace is allowing Nigeria to start raising output.

The wild card is Iraq, where more licenses for foreign oil companies were awarded Friday. Contract terms encourage firms to maximize output quickly. Winners to date aim to boost output from five fields 12-fold to 8.5 million barrels per day.

Given Iraq’s fragile peace and ravaged infrastructure, that looks unrealistic. But even if production increased by a more conservative 1.5 million barrels per day by 2015, it could pressure oil prices through unsettling the organization Iraq helped found 39 years ago: the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

(The term BRIC – Brazil, Russia, India, China – seems to have been coinedby Goldman Sachs in 2001.)