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Global Patterns and Tends in the Production
and Consumption of Oil
Oil – Black Gold -Nearly all the work done in
the world economy -- all the manufacturing,
construction, and transportation -- is done
with energy derived from fuel. The actual
work done by human muscle power is miniscule by comparison. And, the lion's
share of that fuel comes from oil and natural gas, the primary sources of the
world's wealth.
Oil will not just "run out" because all oil production follows a bell curve. This
is true whether we're talking about an individual field, a country, or on the
planet as a whole.
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Oil
2006
Variation in
Consumption
consumption
(000 barrels/day)
since 1990
20,687
+ 22%
24.9
Canada
2,297
+ 32%
25.2
Mexico
2,078
+ 18%
6.9
Country
United States
Consn./inhabitant
(barrels/year)
2
Brazil
2,255
+ 48%
4.3
Venezuela
645
+ 63%
8.9
Argentina
535
+ 30%
4.8
Germany
2,692
=
11.9
France
1,981
+ 8%
11.3
1,812
+ 2%
10.9
Italy
1,743
– 8%
10.9
Spain
1,588
+ 57%
14.3
Netherlands
999
+ 36%
21.9
Turkey
678
+ 42%
3.4
Belgium
638
+ 38%
22.4
Poland
503
+ 78%
4.8
Russia
2 830
– 36%
7.3
Saudi Arabia
2,070
+ 87%
26.8
Iran
1,655
+ 65%
9.2
Iraq
564
+ 41%
7.3
Egypt
645
+ 39%
2.9
S. Africa
544
+ 45%
4.5
China
7,235
+ 215%
2.0
Japan
5,198
– 2%
14.9
India
2,658
+ 127%
0.8
United
Kingdom
3
S. Korea
2,180
+ 108%
16.2
Indonesia
1,208
+ 86%
1.9
Australia
950
+ 29%
16.8
Taiwan
947
+ 75%
15.1
Thailand
941
+ 131%
5.2
Malaisia
520
+ 96%
7.5
Oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce
and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the
point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the
peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.
In practical and
considerably
oversimplified terms,
this means that if
2000 was the year
of global Peak Oil,
worldwide oil
production in the
year 2020 will be
the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2020 will be
both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oildependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will
outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the
price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars
will explode. Robert Wise http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
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Calculate if the country is surplus or deficit, check demand/consumption
figures.
Work out barrels per capita then re-rank the list.
Describe the global distribution and consumption of oil
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Crude Petroleum Imports
Singapore imports (net) more crude petroleum than anywhere else, when this
is measured per person. The value of imports per person is US$ 1808 per
year. Burundi has the lowest value of net imports of crude petroleum per
person: 0.02 US cents worth is imported per hundred people that live there.
One explanation for this difference between Singapore and Burundi is as
follows. Singapore is a rich island well positioned on trade routes, so can
afford to receive large amounts of oil per person. Burundi is a poor landlocked
central African territory, so there are many barriers to imports. Territory size
shows the proportion of worldwide net imports of crude petroleum (in US$)
that are received there. Net imports are imports minus exports. When
exports are larger than imports the territory is not shown. Aside from the
effects of high oil prices, growth in imports in general can be interpreted as a
sign that domestic demand is robust, another reason to say that the
Japanese economy is on the right track ..." Koji Kobayashi, 2006
Crude Petroleum Exports
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Territories in the Middle East export 58% of all crude petroleum. Saudi
Arabia exports over twice the US dollar value of any other territory,
measured in net terms. The United Arab Emirates has the highest per person
export earnings from crude petroleum.
Other important exporters of crude petroleum are Norway, Venezuela, Nigeria
and Mexico. Some regions have no territories with net crude petroleum
exports: these are Southeastern Africa, Southern Asia and Japan. Territory
size shows the proportion of worldwide net exports of crude petroleum (in
US$) that come from there. Net exports are exports minus imports. When
imports are larger than exports the territory is not shown.
Exports of crude petroleum account for 5.3% of spending on all exports. The
cost of getting oil out of the ground is going up, the amount of water in it
is increasing, and there's less and less of the really good oil down there. All of
this is forcing the prices up." James Brock, 2006
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World Population
Q and A: Does the relationship between population and the environment vary
by region?
Yes. When most people link population growth and environmental degradation,
they are usually referring to less developed countries, where most of the
world's people live and population growth is high. But environmental problems
exist in all countries regardless of the level of development. Most of the
environmental degradation in industrialized countries, where only 20 percent
of the world's people live, is attributable to high consumption patterns; each
individual in an industrialized country exerts more pressure on the environment
than perhaps 20 to 30 people in the less developed world. For example,
consumption patterns in the United States are indicative of the industrialized
world's disproportionate use of global resources. The United States has 5
percent of the world's population but uses an estimated 24 percent of the
world's resources. According to Paul Ehrlich in his book The Population Bomb,
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the average American uses as much energy as two Japanese, six Mexicans, 13
Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians, and 370 Ethiopians.
Experts are attempting to find quantitative ways to consider both
consumption patterns and population size when determining the link between
people and the environment. Environmentalists have been using an equation
known as I=PAT, which attempts to factor both causes into determining
environmental impacts.
The causes of tropical deforestation lay both in population growth in less
developed countries and consumption levels in more developed countries.
However, for some other environmental problems such as ozone depletion,
most of the damage is due to the use of refrigerators and air conditioning
systems in industrialized countries, not to population growth.
The adverse environmental impact of consumption patterns in more developed
countries is likely to increase as less developed countries further industrialize
and adopt consumption patterns similar to those of their more financially
wealthy neighbors. Already, elites in the less developed countries mimic the
prolific consumption of rich Americans or Europeans. Consumption has surged
in China and India since the 1980s and, with the fall of the USSR, Eastern
Europeans have increased their appetites for consumer goods. The most rapid
growth in energy consumption now occurs in less developed countries because
of rising affluence, consumption, and population.
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Energy gap: Crisis for humanity? By Richard Black
BBC News website environment
correspondent
It is perhaps too early to talk of an
energy "crisis".
But take your pick from terms like
"serious concern" and "major issue" and
you will not be far from the positions
which analysts are increasingly adopting.
The reason for their concern can be found in a set of factors which are pulling
in glaringly different directions:

Demand for energy, in all its forms, is rising

Supplies of key fuels - notably oil and gas - show signs of decline

Mainstream climate science suggests that reducing greenhouse gas
emissions within two decades would be a prudent thing to do

Meanwhile the Earth's population continues to rise, with the majority of
its six billion people hankering after a richer lifestyle - which means a
greater consumption of energy.
Underlying the growing concern is the relentless pursuit of economic growth,
which historically has been tied to energy consumption as closely as a horse is
tethered to its cart.
It is a vehicle which cannot continue to speed up indefinitely; it must at some
point hit a barrier, of finite supply, unfeasibly high prices or abrupt climate
change.
The immediate question is whether the crash comes soon, or whether
humanity has time to plan a comfortable way out.
Even if it can, the planning is not necessarily going to be easy, or result in
cheap solutions. Every energy source has its downside; there is no free lunch,
wherever you look on the menu.
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Runaway horse
The International Energy Agency
(IEA) predicts a rise in global
energy demand of 50-60% by
2030.
If all else remained equal, that
rising demand would be
accommodated principally by fossil
fuels, which have generally been the
cheapest and most convenient
available.
But oil supplies show signs of running down; this, combined with concerns
about rising demand and political instability, conspired to force prices up from
$40 a barrel at the beginning of 2005 to $60 at its close.
There is more oil out there, for sure; but the size of proven reserves is
uncertain, with oil-producing countries and companies prone to exaggerate the
size of their stocks. Currently uneconomic sources such as tar sands could be
exploited; but at what cost?
Natural gas stocks - in recent times the fuel of choice for electricity
generation are also showing signs of depletion, and there is growing concern in
Western capitals about the political instability associated with oil and gas
supplies from the Middle East and Russia.
Coal, the fuel of the industrial revolution, remains relatively abundant; but
here the climate issue raises its provocative head most volubly, because of all
fuels, coal produces more greenhouse gas emissions for the energy it gives.
Based partly on the predicted availability of cheap coal, the IEA forecasts a
50% rise in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Mainstream climate science, meanwhile, indicates that to avoid dangerous
consequences of climate change, emissions should fall, not rise, by 50%.
The economic and environmental horses are clearly pulling in mutually
incompatible directions.
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No climate curbs
It is a rare human that dons a hair shirt voluntarily; and in seeking to deal
with climate change, we are, it seems, behaving to type.
It took the world's most comfortably-off nations more than seven years to
bring the Kyoto Protocol into force following its signing in 1997.
An alternative "climate pact", the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean
Development and Climate, emerged last year contending that technology alone
would solve global warming.
It recently concluded its first ministerial meeting by endorsing projections that
under its aegis, emissions will at least double by 2050; economic growth is
sacrosanct, and so consumption of coal and other fossil fuels must also
continue to rise.
Concern over climate change, then, is not on a global basis proving to be a
driver for clean technology or for reducing demand for energy.
Price barriers
Rising prices or simply constraints on supplies of fossil fuels could, however,
bring other fuels into the equation; and nuclear fission is at the head of the
queue.
According to the World Nuclear Association, there are now about 440
commercial reactors in the world, providing 16% of its electricity; for major
developing countries such as India and China, nuclear power remains both a
significant part of the electricity mix and a close companion to military
programmes.
But concerns over waste have set other countries such as Germany on a
determinedly non-nuclear path.
Waste apart, nuclear faces another potential obstacle; stocks of uranium are
finite.
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Analysts differ over how soon a uranium deficit might emerge; some believe
that a significant ramping up of nuclear capacity would exhaust economic
reserves on a timescale of decades.
That could be extended by adopting "fast breeder" reactors, which create
more fissile material as they go.
Too good to be true? Perhaps, because there is a major downside; the
creation of plutonium, with its attendant dangers of proliferation.
The other nuclear technology, fusion, is full of hope but even its most ardent
supporters admit it is decades away.
Wind, waves and sunlight
Most of the energy we use on
Earth comes directly or indirectly
from the Sun.
It is the Sun which stirs winds
and the great water cycle,
depositing rain on highlands and
creating the potential for hydroelectric power; it is the Sun's
energy which grew plants which
decayed to form the coal and oil that we have extracted so determinedly in
our industrial age.
Is it now time, then, to use its energy directly, to blanket the Earth in
photo-voltaic cells and silently power humankind's future?
Certainly it could be done, with energy to spare; but at costs up to five
times that of coal and gas, it is not going to be soon.
Wind, wave and tidal power are all fine technologies, but their potential is
limited, not least by the fact that they do not generate continuously.
That could be overcome by storing energy. But there are few realistic ways of
doing it; and the additional cost would quickly negate any advantage these
technologies currently possess.
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Hydrogen, meanwhile, is touted as the great climate-friendly hope.
But hydrogen is just a carrier of energy. It must be created, for example by
using electricity to split water molecules, in which case replacing petrol-driven
cars with hydrogen vehicles would vastly increase the global demand for
electricity.
No free lunch, indeed - but a desperately tortuous and risk-laden menu and a
kitchen where political or environmental fires could flare up at any moment.
Satisfying China's demand for energy By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes - BBC
correspondent, Beijing
The hair-raising amount it now costs you to fill up your car with petrol is
apparently all China's fault! Or so you might think to read some of the more
alarmist reports in the western media.
China has, we are told, been running around the world signing oil deals with
everyone from Iran, to Sudan to Angola. In the race to secure future oil
resources China is prepared to deal with even the dodgiest regimes, and pay
the highest prices.
Like all good stories they carry more than a grain of truth. China has been on
a buying spree, and is prepared to pay top-dollar to get its hands on the oil
it needs. But it is more than a slight exaggeration to say China is to blame
for $70 a barrel oil prices.
In fact China, with a fifth of the world's population, consumes only 4% of the
world's daily oil output. It imports about three million barrels a day. A lot to
be sure, but far below American consumption.
Onward and upward
The real reason why everybody is suddenly talking about China is that 15 years
ago, it imported virtually no oil - it was self-sufficient.
But as China's economy has surged ahead at 10% a year, its own supplies of oil
have begun to dry up. The only option has been to import.
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From zero 15 years ago, China last year became the world's number two oil
importer.
Go out on the streets of Beijing and you can see why. Fifteen years ago, the
roads were empty, save for the constant stream of bicycles.
Today they are jammed from morning to night with close to three million
private cars.
A thousand new cars hit the city's streets every day. By 2020 China will
have 140 million private cars, more even than the United States.
One among many
That means that China is going to continue signing deals. According to James
Brock, an energy analyst based in Beijing, we're going to have to get used to
ever higher oil prices.
Your grandchildren will ask you, what's a petrol car granddad? - James Brock.
Energy analyst
"China is only one of many factors pushing prices" he says.
"The cost of getting the oil out of the ground is going up, the amount of
water in it is increasing, and there's less and less of the really good oil down
there. All of this is forcing the prices up."
Ultimately the oil is going to run out - and, according to James Brock, sooner
than many of us may realise.
"Your grandchildren will ask you, what's a petrol car granddad?"
"It'll be as soon as that," he says.
Dirty, bad and dangerous
So what will China do when the oil runs out?
The answer is that to fuel its future China will go back to the past. China's
future fuel will be coal.
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Coal has a bad reputation. Dirty, dangerous and highly polluting, the prospect
of a coal powered future will fill many with dread.
China is already by far the world's biggest producer and consumer of coal.
Its 30,000-odd mines churned out more than two billion tonnes of the stuff
last year. That's more than a third of all the coal produced in the world.
It also cost the lives of 6,000 Chinese miners, and is the main reason why
China is now second only to the US in its output of greenhouse gases.
But coal's dirty reputation may be about to change. China has recently given
the go-ahead for construction of several huge new projects to turn dirty coal
in to clean gas.
The five great rivers of Asia all rise in China.... China wants to dam them all
The science and technology behind 'coal gasification' has been understood for
years.
But only with oil prices at $60-70 a barrel has it finally become profitable to
go ahead and build the multi-billion dollar plants needed to carry out the
process.
According to the experts these new mega-plants will take dirty sulphur rich
coal and turn it in to clean, sulphur-free gases like methane, all ready to be
liquefied and put in to the tanks of China's millions of cars, or burned it its
power stations.
Push for renewables
But even that won't be enough. That's why China is also pumping billions of
dollars in to renewable energy. Everything from solar, to wind power, to
biomass. By 2020 China wants 15%of its power to come from renewable
sources. Most of that will come from one source, hydro-power.
The five great rivers of Asia all rise in China; the Yellow river, the Yangtze,
the Mekong, the Salween and the great Brahmaputra. China wants to dam
them all.
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On the middle reaches of the Yangtze work is nearing completion on the
biggest of them all, the Three Gorges Dam. When it's finished in three years
time the world's biggest turbines deep inside the world's biggest dam will
pump out 25 gigawatts of electricity. That's equivalent to one-third of the
UK's total energy output.
But that's only the start. Plans have just been approved to build another
mega dam, higher up the river, across the Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the
most beautiful and spectacular river gorges in the world. Further west close to
the Burma border plans to build a series of dams across the Salween (Nu
Jiang) have recently been given the green light. Environmental groups are
purple with rage.
But the simple fact is that China will need all of these projects simply to
keep up with its breakneck economic growth
Carbon addicts and climate debt VIEWPOINT - Andrew Simms
The fossil fuel industry is a major source of
tax revenue for western nations, which is a
disincentive to cutting greenhouse gas
emissions, says Andrew Simms in this
week's Green Room. But while some of
that taxation depends on the huge profits
reported by companies like BP and Shell, he
argues they would be bankrupt if the taxes
they paid reflected the social costs of their
emissions.
The UK appears to be in denial as it
becomes more deeply addicted to oil and its
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profits The last week has raised a new problem of substance abuse in Britain.
In a world of growing climate chaos and oil scarcity, at least US President
George Bush admitted his country's "serious problem" of fossil-fuel addiction.
But the UK appears to be in denial as it becomes more deeply addicted to oil
and its profits, raising the real danger that growing oil revenues could become
a big disincentive to cut oil use and tackle global poverty.
Oil magnate J Paul Getty set the template for 20th Century inequality when
he declared: "The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights."
Based on statistics from the International Energy Agency (IEA), an average US
citizen will in a single day generate as much of the chief greenhouse gas,
carbon dioxide, as someone in China does in more than a week.
For someone in Tanzania to generate the same amount would take a
staggering seven months.
Such inequality is a major barrier to agreement on international environmental
action.
The UK and the US became rich by burning more than their fair share of a
finite inheritance of fossil fuels. Now the profits of oil companies like Exxon,
Shell and BP are breaking records and worsening the addiction.
The consequence is a creeping climate chaos that disproportionately affects
some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable places like Bangladesh, the
South Pacific islands and sub-Saharan Africa.
To halt this climate chaos, we must reduce burning of fossil fuels; yet our
global economy depends on them for about 80% of its primary energy. Rising
growth, increasing demand for fossil fuels, climate concerns; the outcome will
be higher prices. The poor, already deprived of their equitable share of the
world's energy, are likely to see their share shrink even further, just as they
bear the biggest burden of climate change. In a carbon-constrained world, the
energy pie can only shrink; who gets what becomes the crucial question.
Trickle down, flood up
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Virtually all conventional economists say economic growth is the answer to
poverty. But more growth means more greenhouse gas emissions, and in turn
more rapid climate change which then hurts the poorest most. If growth
brought other benefits to the poorest, this might still be a path with merit.
But our latest research at Nef, the New Economics Foundation, shows that
wealth is not trickling down, it is flooding up. Between 1990 and 2001, just
60 cents of every $100 of extra global income from growth went to reduce
poverty for those living on less than $1 a day. In the previous decade, the
figure was $2.20 per $100. In the 1990s, then, it took an extra $166 of
production and consumption - with all its associated environmental damage to generate each $1 of poverty reduction. In environmental terms, it is a
suicidally low level of economic efficiency, as the world's poor miss the benefits
of growth but pay its costs. Climate change becomes an ecological debt.
Tax and burn
So what are the chances of western governments such as Britain's, which have
standing commitments on eradicating poverty, linking their programmes in this
arena to their policies on curbing greenhouse gas emissions? Not good, it would
appear; not only do our homes, transport, and food system rely on fossil fuels,
but so does the public purse.
For someone in Tanzania to generate the same amount of CO2 as the average
American generates in a day would take a staggering seven months
Our new calculations from research in progress with WWF, based on Treasury
statistics, show that UK government income from the fossil fuel sector conservatively estimated at £34.9bn ($61bn) - is greater than revenue from
council tax, stamp duty, capital gains and inheritance tax combined.
Policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions could therefore have a major
impact on the government coffers; a serious disincentive to action. But even
this level of revenue from the fossil fuel sector does not reflect the true cost
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of its environmental impact. Treasury estimates suggest that the
environmental damage per tonne of carbon dioxide could be around £20 ($35).
Combining the emissions that stem from BP's direct activities and the sale of
its products leads to 1,458m tonnes of CO2-equivalent entering the
atmosphere, with a damage bill of £29bn ($51bn). Subtracting that from the
£11bn ($19bn) annual profit it has just reported puts it £18bn ($31bn) in
the red; effectively bankrupt. The same calculation puts Shell £4.5bn ($8bn)
in the red, even as it reports an annual profit of £13bn ($23bn).
That is how unsustainable the economy has become.
Fossil-fuelled fantasy
The way we view economic success in the UK has become a fossil-fuelled
fantasy.
No accounting system with a hint of common sense would view profiting from
the liquidation of a never-to-be-repeated natural asset as a good thing, even
less so when it leads to global warming.
Answer following questions :1. Why is oil crucial to the an economy?
2. Why is the demand for oil increasing?
3. Why do such disparities between production and demand for oil exist in
the world?
4. Why is oil strategically important?
5. Why is the oil industry dominated by large TNC?
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6. Why are the environmental impacts of oil production and consumption
often ignored?
7. How do MEDC governments influence LEDCs in their quest for oil?
8. Why does development in India and China lead to concerns over oil
prices?
9. Why do many nations require the assistance of foreign oil companies to
exploit their oil reserves?
10.
What is the impact of oil use on the environment?
11. Why are non-renewable sources of energy not fully exploited?
12.
Why is coal less desirable for China’s energy need?
13.
What is the future of oil- based economies?
14.
What viable solutions are presented as alternatives to oil-based
economies?
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