Oil producing countries

Oil is the world's black gold. Oil moves the world: with it gasoline, plastic, and many derivatives are manufactured. Although there are many oil producing countries, Spain is not a country that produces oil, or at least not in significant quantities, and must dedicate a large part of the budgets of each year for the purchase of it, suffering from the volatility of its prices.

For example, these last two years oil prices have hit record lows causing great savings for importing countries such as Spain ... but if they had increased, prices would increase in a chain, starting with gasoline and causing an impact on the life of the country.

How the price of oil is set

The price of oil is set per barrel, instead of liters or gallons, and since oil is a stable good, its price is set based on supply and demand.

This organization controls, based on its production, the level of oil in the world to set the price and not let its volatility drive the world crazy, as happened in the 70s with the oil crisis in the United States.

On the other hand, countries outside the organization, such as Russia, control their production and prices unilaterally, often using their client countries as an economic weapon, doing the same with gas. Next we will see which are the most important oil producing countriess.

The main oil producing countries

The main oil countries They are not exactly the members of the previous organization, but practically they are.

The list of the main oil-producing countries is not always the same, in fact, recently Venezuela, one of the countries within the 'top ten' fell to the thirteenth, being the subject of debate whether it is a cause or symptom of the crisis Venezuelan.

According to information from the CIA, we present the main oil producing countries of the world. 

Kuwait

It is the tenth largest oil producing country in the world. Its production is around 2,7 million barrels of oil, and represents about 3% of the world's total production. It suffered a war because of the "investigation" that Saddam Hussein did to the country in 1990, the famous war in the Persian Gulf.

Its reserves are estimated to have a duration of 100 years, being a solid income base for the country.

Mexico

Mexico it is the eleventh exporting country in the world, and produces about 2,85 million barrels, with great prospects thanks to the reforms that the country is going through and discoveries of oil wells with large reserves in the future.

The income from its oil exports represents 10% of the country's total income.

Iran

Iran generates 3.4 million barrels, and thanks to its reserves and unexploited wells, it is considered a country of the so-called 'superpowers'.

Those 3.4 million barrels represent 5,1% of the total oil that moves in the world daily. The money generated from these exports represents 60% of Iran's total income.

And that's without counting on its reserves that guarantee a large amount of income, not only with oil, but with electricity and gas. Iran will give much to talk about.

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates is a federation located in Arabia made up of Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaima, Sarja and Umm al-Qaywayn.

Together they produce around 3.5 million barrels, mainly produced by Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sarja, the main centers of extraction of the liquid in the United Arab Emirates.

They have a reserve of approximately 100 billion barrels. They have so much money thanks to it that they allow themselves to rescue each other.

Dubai, despite everything, is preparing to emancipate itself from oil and bases its economy less and less on liquid and more on tourism and business.

Iraq

Iraq is being punished very seriously by its geopolitical problems, by internal conflicts, Al-Qaeda, the recent Daesh attack, and a country punished by a military intervention lasting more than ten years.

Despite this, Iraq It is the country with the fifth largest oil reserve in the world, the majority in intact fields, and despite this, it produces around 4 million barrels of oil, which provide 94% of the country's energy and 66% of the country's total income.

A great future is expected for the country when it solves its problems.

Canada

Another North American country on the list of the most important oil-producing countries.

Canada has just 0,5% of the world's population, but it produces more than 5% of the world's oil.

It produces around 4,5 million barrels, and that its reserves reach 180.000 million barrels, being the third largest oil reserve on the planet.

Canada's 'problem' is that most of its reserves are in tar shafts, which complicates its extraction. Once technology makes extraction technology cheaper, Canadian crude production will grow.

China

Chinese crude production has been increasing steadily for the last fifty years, taking an unexpected and great growth in the last fifteen years, thanks to the economic opening implemented by the government.

Manufactures about 4.6 million barrels of crude, but as its consumption is brutal, even so, it continues to be a crude importing country, especially from Russia and other Asian and Arab countries.

Its reserves are modest, more or less, 20 billion barrels, but it is expected that thanks to fracking (hydraulic fracturing) its production and reserves will grow considerably.

Russia

Russia is a giant in everything and with oil we were not going to find its Achilles heel.

Their 11 million barrels of oil represents 13-14% of the total of the crude that moves in the world.

Its reserves are the third largest in the country, not counting all the crude hidden under the ice of Siberia and northern Russia, in the Arctic, also under thick and solid ice.

Let us remember that Russia represents, in territory, one sixth of the total territory of the planet, which makes us see that it does not fully exploit all its deposits.

Saudi Arabia

Until recently it was the world's largest crude producer, with almost 12 million barrels of oil. Its crude reserves, by itself, represent 5% of existing crude today in the world, and a large part, still unexploited.

Because its production has decreased in favor of other types of energy and fuels, it lost the first place.

United States

Thanks to fracking and increased exploitation of its oil fields, the third country in North America leads the world ranking with almost 14 billion crude. Due to the large investment in technology, they have been able to implement modern crude extraction methods, such as in tar sands and shale.

Despite being the largest producer of crude in the world, they have the problem of China: they import a large amount of crude to Mexico and Canada, two other large oil countries, as their demand continues to exceed their production capacity.

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The countries with the largest oil reserves in the world

Not necessarily being an oil-producing country makes you better, perhaps we can see the world's oil-producing countries with a greater perspective: see which ones have, in addition to a large production, a reserve that guarantees them that position and stability in the future. .

Countries with the largest oil reserves in the world

(numbers are in billions)

1. Venezuela - 297,6
2. Saudi Arabia - 267,9
3. Canada - 173,1
4. Iran - 154,6
5. Iraq - 141,4
6. Kuwait - 104
7. United Arab Emirates - 97,8
8. Russia - 80
9. Libya - 48
10. Nigeria - 37,2
11. Kazakhstan - 30
12. Qatar - 25,380
13. United States of America - 20,680
14. China - 17,300
15. Brazil - 13,150
16. Algeria - 12,200
17. Angola - 10,470
18. Mexico - 10,260
19. Ecuador - 8,240
20. Azerbaijan - 7

The main oil exporters

It is necessary to know what the countries that have decided to export a lot, and base, practically, the national economy on oil. We see cases such as Iran, Mexico or Venezuela in which a decrease, like the one we have experienced these months, greatly affects their budgets.

With this last list you will be able to see better the health of the countries and which one is the one that best controls its crude oil.

• In Africa: Algeria, Angola, Libya and Nigeria.
• In the Middle East we have Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Kuwait.
• In South America we have Ecuador and Venezuela.

And finally, large producers and exporters, who are not members of OPEC, we have Canada, Sudan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Norway, Russia and Oman.

Will the list of oil producing countries over time? It's likely but most of the ones we've seen have been topping the production chart for years so the change won't happen anytime soon.

Main oil consuming countries

On the opposite side of the coin, we have the countries that consume the most barrels daily. In some cases, like the United States, despite being among the largest oil producers, it still needs to import more oil than it produces. This is because its demand is still greater than the production it can provide. To take a closer look and get a global idea of ​​this phenomenon, we can see in the following list the daily consumption of each country, as well as the average oil consumption per unit of inhabitants.

With the data obtained in 2019, in 2018, these were barrels (in thousands) consumed per day for each country:

1. United States: 20.456
2. China: 13.525
3. India: 5.156
4. Japan: 3.854
5. Saudi Arabia: 3.724
6. Russia: 3.228
7. Brazil: 3.081
8. South Korea: 2.793
9. Canada: 2.447
10. Germany: 2.321
11. Iran: 1.879
12. Mexico: 1.812
13. Indonesia: 1.785
14. United Kingdom: 1.618
15. France: 1.607
16. Thailand: 1.478
17. Singapore: 1.449
18. S
19. Italy: 1.253
20. Australia: 1.094

What factors influence these differences?

On one side is the amount of population and on the other the level of wealth of each country. Here we could define it with per capita income. This explains why the United States, without being the most populous country, consumed so much oil (about 22 barrels per day per inhabitant). In fact, its population consumed on average slightly more than twice what a person would consume in Spain (about 10 barrels a day per inhabitant). And that is why countries with a much larger population but with a much lower per capita income such as China consume less oil than the United States.

For example, China and India have very similar populations, India is slightly less populated. However, China's wealth level is higher, which is why oil consumption was also higher.

Each barrel of oil costs on average at the current rate about $ 55, an average that can be carried over to 2018. A consumption of 1.335.000 barrels, which is what Spain consumed per day, had a cost of $ 73.500.000 daily.