BUSINESS / ENERGY and ENVIRONMENT

List: Top Ten Crude Oil Producing Countries

Date: 2003

Source: The Times newspaper

Base: All oil producing countries

Notes: In 1998 Oil accounted for 37.5% of global energy production. At current consumption rates and known (or proven) reserves we have enough oil for at least 40 years. At a nominal figure of US$40 a barrel (price at time of writing US$56), shale oil can supply us for the next 250 years (at current consumption). The US Energy Information Agency has estimated that we can produce about 550 billion barrels of oil from tar sands and shale oil at a price below US$30. Totalling all forms of oil on or in the earth we have enough oil for the next 5,000 years - at current consumption rates. There is no energy crisis. Only bad mathematics. "As Sheik Yamani, Saudi Arabia's former oil minister and a founding architect of OPEC, has pointed out: 'The Stone Age came to an end not for lack of stones, and the oil age will end, but not for lack of oil.' We stopped using stone because bronze and iron were superior materials, and likewise we will stop using oil, when other energy technologies provide superior benefits." - Bjørn Lomborg in 'The Skeptical Environmentalist' - Cambridge University Press 2001.