TORONTO, Canada, September 11 /PRNewswire/ --

- OPEC, Russia and Mexico Export Capacity to Drop 2.5 Million Barrels 
a day by 2010

CIBC (TSX: CM; NYSE: CM) - Soaring rates of domestic oil consumption will 
reduce crude exports from OPEC, Russia and Mexico by 2.5 million barrels 
per day by the end of this decade, predicts a new CIBC World Markets study. 
Currently these countries account for roughly 60 per cent of global 
production.

The study found that suddenly oil producing countries are themselves
becoming major oil consumers. Last year, OPEC members together with
independent producers Russia and Mexico consumed over 12 million barrels per
day, surpassing Western Europe to become the second largest oil market in the
world. The CIBC World Markets report found that highly subsidized gasoline
prices are often a significant factor in surging rates of domestic oil
consumption found in many major oil producing countries.

"Domestic demand growth of as much as five per cent per year in key oil
producing countries is already beginning to cannibalize exports and will
increasingly do so in the future as production plateaus or declines in many 
of these countries," says Jeff Rubin, Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets. 
"At current rates of domestic consumption growth in the Middle East, OPEC's 
future export capacity must be increasingly called into question. Similar 
trends of rising domestic consumption are now evident in Russia and Mexico 
as well. These trends are likely to result in a sharp escalation in world 
oil prices over the next few years."

With exports from OPEC, Russia and Mexico expected to decline by seven
per cent over the next three years, markets will seek greater reliance on
higher cost unconventional deposits. CIBC World Markets expects that Canadian
oil sands will surpass deep water wells as the single largest source of new
oil exports by decade end.

In sharp contrast to trends in OPEC, Mexico and China, Canada's own oil
consumption fell last year and will be increasingly subject to carbon
abatement regulations in the future. Virtually all of the nearly one million
barrel increase in production by the end of the decade will be exported.

Canada's oil sands are likely to become more coveted as they represent
one of the last great reserves of supply open to private investment. The CIBC
World Markets study estimates they represent anywhere from 50- 70 per cent of
the world's oil reserves open to private investment, depending on one's view
of the investment climate in Nigeria and Kazakhstan.

Mr. Rubin notes "For most multinational firms, the world is rapidly
shrinking. Increasingly they are shut out of the backyards of all the state-
owned oil patches and they have to compete against those state firms in 
places still open to private investment. Canada remains one of the few places 
where there is still private access to strategically important reserves, in 
sharp contrast, for example, to the oil sand deposits in Venezuela."

Mr. Rubin, will raise these issues and other challenges facing the energy
sector in his presentation at the 6th Annual Association for the Study of 
Peak Oil & Gas conference in Cork, Ireland, September 17, 2007

http://www.aspo-ireland.org/index.cfm/page/aspo6.

The complete CIBC World Markets report is available at:

http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/occrept62.pdf.

CIBC World Markets is the wholesale and corporate banking arm of CIBC,
providing a range of integrated credit and capital markets products,
investment banking, and merchant banking to clients in key financial markets
in North America and around the world. We provide innovative capital 
solutions and advisory expertise across a wide range of industries as well 
as top-ranked research for our corporate, government and institutional 
clients.