The World Outlook on Oil

What a Global Look Shows

Flow Research has recently completed a six volume study of the world oil and oil flow measurement markets. Here are some of our conclusions:

•           The MidEast is by far the most oil-rich region in the world.

•           The United States consumes about twice as much crude oil as it produces.

•           Like the United States , China consumes about twice as much crude oil as it produces.

•           In addition to the MidEast, Europe and North America are blessed with large amounts of crude oil.

•           By contrast with other regions, Asia has relatively small amounts of oil. 

•           Japan is rich in coal, but has very little crude oil or natural gas.

•           Most of Europe’s oil is located in Russia , Kazakhstan , Azerbaijan , and the North Sea countries, especially Norway .  This is true of both crude oil production and crude oil reserves. (All of Russia is classified with Europe .)

The Five Main Sources of Energy

How do countries make up for their lack of crude oil? Countries like the United States and China , that consume twice as much crude oil as they produce, need to make it up in some other way.  They do it either by importing more oil or by supplementing their produced oil with some other form of energy.  Since there are five main sources of energy, they use one of the following five energy forms to meet their energy needs:

While these are the five main sources of energy, some of these have many subtypes.  For example, crude oil is refined into many types of refined fuels, including motor gasoline, heating oil, diesel, liquefied petroleum gases, kerosene, and other petroleum-based products.  Natural gas is processed and refined into industrial gases such as helium, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other gases.  It is also converted into liquefied natural gas (LNG) for transportation purposes.  There are many types of renewables, including solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and others.

For the most part, countries rely on the source of energy that is most freely available to them. While China does not have a lot of oil or natural gas, it does have rich coal resources.  This is why China relies so heavily on coal for its energy needs, despite the environmental hazards.  The same is true of Japan .  So while China has only modest supplies of oil and natural gas, and Japan has virtually none, they fulfill a significant amount of their energy needs through coal they produce themselves.

Next: Asia ’s Need for Energy

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