Some numbers on the oil business

Table from Yergin footnote on page 830, condensed

Production in barrels per day. One barrel is 42 gallons, about 8 lb/gal.

Year USA Russian World

1885 60,000 38,000 101,000

1915 770,000 188,000 1,184,000 30 years later ten times

1945 4,695,000 408,000 7,109,000 30 years later seven times

Current data

9,000,000 75,000,000 60 years later ten times

Original OPEC: Persia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venesuela

Present OPEC: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar

Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Venezuela, Indonesia.

Who are the big non-OPEC producers: Argentine, Australia, Brazil, Britain,

Canada, Egypt, Mexico, Norway, Oman, Sudan, and especially Russia.

Increasing or new production from: Angola, Morocco, South China Sea including

the Gulf of Siam, Chad, Artic Canada [economic?], offshore eastern

Canada, former Soviet satellites Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhistan,

and Russia. Note especially eastern Siberia oil and gas.

I have not seen very useful hard numbers for natural gas, partly because figures come out in various units, and conversion factors are obscure. In January, 2003, The Economist published the following figures for 2001.

World natural gas production 88 trillion cubic feet = 242 billion per day

US gas 19.8 trillion for year 54.6 billion per day

Russia 19.4 53

Canada 6.2 16.9

Britain 3.8 10.4

Indonesia 2.3 6.3

Others the other 40%

6,000 cubic feet of gas is approximately equal to one barrel of oil, in energy.

Natural gas selling prices are commonly quoted in dollars per million Btu,

which stand for British thermal units, the amount of heat generated

in burning. One million Btus is approximately 1,000 cubic feet of gas depending on the specific gases in there, mostly methane.