Global Oil Supply by Region

The Mideast remains the largest oil-producing region.  Mideast dominance in oil reserves is even more pronounced. The region holds about two-thirds of the one trillion barrels of global proven oil reserves, so the region's critical role in world oil supply will continue and will grow.  The United States, by contrast, holds only 4 percent of global proved reserves.

Saudia Arabia, the market-balancer in the early 1980s, has been the world's largest producer during the 1990s.  Not only did Saudi Arabia increase its production to fill the gap left by the loss of Iraqi and Kuwaiti supplies after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, but production declined in the other two large producers, the United States and the Former Soviet Union.

Mideast production would have been higher throughout the 1990s if Iraq had not been constrained by the United Nations sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The so-called "Humanitarian Oil Sales" have provided Iraq only limited and closely controlled reentry into world oil markets.

Mideast production also would have been higher at various times if it had not been for the market-balancing role played with varying degrees of success by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). OPEC currently includes Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.   Ecuador and Gabon withdrew their membership at the end of 1992 and 1994, respectively.

North America is the second largest producing area after the Middle East. The United States, the second largest producing country in the world, accounts for almost 60 percent of the North American region’s total. Canada, the United States and Mexico all have long production histories, and production from mature fields has been declining. However, a new surge in technology has benefited both new field development and more complete production from existing fields.

Production in the Soviet Union peaked at about 12 million barrels a day in the early 1980s when it was the top world oil producer. The region’s demand collapse, in combination with its aggressive production targets set to maintain foreign exchange, masked its rapid production decline in the late 1980s as the Soviet Union broke up. The former Soviet Union has recently been the third-ranked producer, after Saudi Arabia and the United States.   One of the most visible new production prospects has been the Caspian Sea in Central Asia, in spite of the enormous logistical and political hurdles involved in getting the oil produced to world markets.

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