Oil and the global economy

Current events in the Middle East including the dramatic and tragic events in Libya have caused a spike in global petroleum prices with serious implications for the economic recovery now underway. Oil is often the key to understanding the history of the global economy. In order to understand it's role and to make better sense of what is going on we need to know the basic data about this precious but diminishing resource. fortunately a lot of information is available , although it has the limitation that the principal source for the data are the oil companies themselves.

Let's look at the data for production ,consumption and principal exports. All the data is assembled by the energy information agency of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Proven oil reserves by country billions of barrels

Saudi Arabia 264.3
Canada. 178.8
Iran. 132.5
Iraq. 115.0
Kuwait. 101.5
U.A.E. 97.8
Venezuela. 79.7
Russia. 60.0
Libya. 39.1
Nigeria. 35.9
U.S. 21.4
China. 18.3
Qatar. 15.2
Mexico. 12.9
Algeria. 11.4
Brazil. 11.2
Kazakhstan. 9.0
Norway. 7.7
Azerbaijan. 7.0
India. 5.8

Top 20 countries. 1224.5 (95 %)
rest of world. 68.1. (5%)
World total. 1292.6
note: Proved resources estimated with reasonable certainty to be recoverable with present technology and prices.


Oil production millions of barrels /day

1.Saudia Arabia. 10.72
2.Russia. 9.67
3.U.S. 8.37
4.Iran. 4.12
5.Mexico. 3.71
6.China. 3.64
7.Canada. 3.84
8.UA.E. 2.94
9.Venezuela. 2.81
10.Norway. 2.79
11.Kuwait. 2.67
12.Nigeria. 2.44
13.Brazil. 2.16
14. Iraq. 2.01

Libya. 1.65

Oil Consumption millions of barrels per day


1.U.S.         20.59
2. China        7.27
3. Japan          5.22
4.  Russia        3.10
5. Germany      2.63
6. India            2.53
7. Canada        2.22
8. Brazil           2.12
9. South Korea 2.12
10.Saudi Arabia 2.07
11. Mexico       2.03
12.France         1.97
13. U.K.           1.82
14. Italy             1.71


Oil exporters millions barrels per day


1. Saudi Arabia    8.65
2. Russia               6.57
3. Norway 2.54
4.Iran 2.52
5. U.A.E.   2.52
6.Venezuela    2.2
7. Kuwait  2.15
8. Nigeria      2.15
9. Algeria 1.85
10. Mexico  1.68
11. Libya   1.52
12. Iraq      1.43
13. Angola   1.36
14. Kazakhstan  1.11

Oil net importers millions of barrels per day

1.U.S.     12.22
2. Japan 5.10
3. China   3.44
4.  Germany  2.48
5. S. Korea 2.15
6. France   1.89
7. India    1.69
8. Italy      1.56
9. Spain     1.56
10. Taiwan  0.94

Source of U.S. Imports

Canada  11 %
Mexico   11
Saudi Arabia 9
Venezuela 8
Nigeria  7
Iraq        4
25 other countries 8