• Oil—How Do We Get It?
    Awake!—2003 | November 8

    • With passing years, oil’s supremacy in the global market has been reinforced by the ongoing discovery of new oil fields in various parts of the world​—some 50,000 of them! But in terms of production, the important factor is, not the number of fields discovered, but their size. How big are they?

      Oil fields that contain at least five billion barrels of recoverable oil​—called supergiants—​are the largest in the classification, while the second largest (from five hundred million to five billion barrels) are called world-class giants. Although some 70 countries are listed in the “U.S. Geological Survey World Petroleum Assessment 2000” as having some oil reserves, only a few of them have giant oil fields. (See the box on page 7.) The largest number of supergiant oil fields are grouped in the Arabian-Iranian sedimentary basin, which comprises the area in and around the Persian Gulf.

      The search for new oil sources has not stopped. Instead, it has been reinforced by state-of-the-art technology. Currently the Caspian Sea region, made up of the nations of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, has caught the attention of oil producers. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, this region has huge potential for the exploitation of oil and natural gas. Alternative exportation routes, such as through Afghanistan, are being studied. Additional potential has also been found in the Middle East, Greenland, and parts of Africa.

  • Oil—How Do We Get It?
    Awake!—2003 | November 8

    • [Graph on page 7]

      (For fully formatted text, see publication)

      MAIN SOURCES OF OIL

      Total amounts are in billions of barrels. This does not include undiscovered resources

      ▪ OPEC member

      • Country that has one or more supergiant fields

      Cumulative production

      ◆ Reserves

      ▪ • ◆ 332.7 SAUDI ARABIA

      • ◆ 216.5 UNITED STATES

      • ◆ 192.6 RUSSIA

      ▪ • ◆ 135.9 IRAN

      ▪ • ◆ 130.6 VENEZUELA

      ▪ • ◆ 125.1 KUWAIT

      ▪ • ◆ 122.8 IRAQ

      ▪ • ◆ 113.3 UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

      • ◆ 70.9 MEXICO

      • ◆ 42.9 CHINA

      ▪ • ◆ 41.9 LIBYA

      ▪ ◆ 33.4 NIGERIA

      ◆ 21.2 CANADA

      ▪ ◆ 21.0 INDONESIA

      ◆ 20.5 KAZAKHSTAN

      ▪ • ◆ 18.3 ALGERIA

      ◆ 17.6 NORWAY

      ◆ 16.9 UNITED KINGDOM