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Page added on November 2, 2013
Oil Reserves Overview: Not Running Out of Oil (Yet)
With all the statistical information that has been published lately, we’ve decided to make a brief review of statistical data on world oil reserves and production. Are we already running out of oil? How much oil is being produced per year? In our article we gathered some of the latest data regarding world oil reserves and presented it in a form of charts.
World oil reserves by region
According to this chart, known world oil reserves are, generally, growing in all regions except for North America and Europe. This does not mean, of course, that we wouldn’t eventually run out of oil, but it is not happening yet.
This chart shows the world’s top ten oil reserves holders: Venezuela (known oil reserves estimated at 297,570 million barrels), Saudi Arabia (267,910 million barrels), Canada (173,105), Iran (154,580), Iraq (141,350), Kuwait (104,000), United Arab Emirates (97,800), Russia (80,000), Libya (48,010) and Nigeria (37,200). According to the same source, oil reserves in the rest of the world can be estimated at 249,057 million barrels.
World oil production by region
An average of 86,895 thousand barrels of oil per day has been produced in 2012, that is 2.9% more than in 2011 and 4.7% more than in 2000, despite the declining share of oil in world total primary energy supply (46% in 1973, approximately 31,5% in 2011).
According to Eni, a list of world’s top ten oil producers (the figures include crude oil, non conventional oil and natural gas liquids) as of December 31st, 2012, included Saudi Arabia (11,584 thousand barrels per day), Russia (10,734), the United States (9,149), China (4,175), Canada (3,770), Iran (3,541), the United Arab Emirates (3,539), Iraq (3,031), Kuwait (2,959) and Mexico (2,920).
The 2013 edition of the Key World Energy Statistics—the International Energy Agency’s summary of key energy data—has slightly different figures for world oil production in 2012. According to this source, Mexico never made top 10, being replaced by Venezuela.
6 Comments on "Oil Reserves Overview: Not Running Out of Oil (Yet)"
Arthur on Sat, 2nd Nov 2013 4:43 pm
“According to this chart, known world oil reserves are, generally, growing in all regions except for North America and Europe. This does not mean, of course, that we wouldn’t eventually run out of oil, but it is not happening yet.”
In a nutshell why TheOilDrum called it a day. We are 10-20-God knows how many years too early. I can see it from the visitor numbers of my 22 months old energy blog: peaked 12 months ago, now nobody cares anymore.
shortonoil on Sat, 2nd Nov 2013 6:22 pm
“I can see it from the visitor numbers of my 22 months old energy blog: peaked 12 months ago, now nobody cares anymore. ”
Typical case of “can’t see the forest for all those dam trees”. In this case all those barrels. There is no shortage of “oil”; the USGS says 4,300 Gb, somewhere on this planet. As fields decline they just pick the next mud hole patch to boost those P1 reserve numbers back up. They can do this because as the high value fields decline the price goes up, making more low quality fields into P1 status.
Petroleum is the world’s primary energy provider, and because it powers the bulk of world’s transportation machinery it falls into the category of an essential commodity. It drives the world’s economy, and as its quality falls its ability to drive that economy goes with it. It is not a coincidence that every major economy in the world now has massive amounts of unserviceable debt. That the world’s banking system is insolvent, and must be bailed out continuously with massive amounts of Central Bank funny money just to stay afloat. That youth unemployment in Spain is topping 70%, that children in Greece are often discovered searching for food in garbage cans. That 40% of Americans depend on food stamps to feed their families. That the the dream of the young American couple buying a home has become just that, a dream. The power of almighty oil is declining, but there is still plenty of barrels out there. Barrels that have become so weak that they won’t be able to get a young American couple a home, or a Greek child out of a garbage can!
What most people can’t “get” is that we live in an “oil based civilization”, and that the quality of our culture depends on the quality of the petroleum that it is built upon! People are looking for a “Peak”. A Peak that will never come as long as barrels from sources that can’t even feed a Greek child are continuously added to the mix.
rockman on Sat, 2nd Nov 2013 6:57 pm
One more weak-minded attempt to dismiss the primary basis for focusing on PO: the effect on the oil consumers. They try the worn out “running out of oil” pitch that my 12 yo daughter has no trouble seeing through. And then toss in the favorite denier crutch: reserves in the ground which have no bearing on the truly critical factor…production rate.
And a very obvious question: if TOD is no longer around for the stated reason why are we all here on this site discussing the same matter?
Arthur on Sat, 2nd Nov 2013 10:17 pm
“And a very obvious question: if TOD is no longer around for the stated reason why are we all here on this site discussing the same matter?”
Probably because the scope of this site is much wider then TOD bean counters and includes geopolitics, finance, demographics, technology, etc., etc.
Shortonoil: Greece has nothing to do with PO but everything with irresponsible taking on debt once they were lied into the euro thanks to Goldman-Sachs book cookers. Youth unemployment has always been high in Spain. Industrial giant Germany is outright booming, why does not PO bite here?
Kenz300 on Sun, 3rd Nov 2013 1:41 am
Walk, buy a bicycle or use mass transit…………
Oil is mainly used for transportation…….
krishna on Sun, 3rd Nov 2013 3:16 am
worlds no 1 oil reserves venuzula but it is not in the top ten producers and it has 297 billion barrels worth of 10 years of world consumption as of today so whats the point of having so many reserves but not abl to meet the consumption or demand of the people…..so no matter how many reserves are there in the world peak oil is imminent …..297 billion barrels with 1.7 million barrels production oil is going to last for 479 years …so we are not going to run out of oil but we are going to get less oil than what we want