Crude world
• Oil provides energy for 95 per cent of the world’s transportation
- Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, had an annual profit of US $17 billion in 2001 (equivalent to about five per cent of India’s GDP)
- Oil, which could have made Nigeria one of the world’s wealthiest countries, has made it one of the poorest
(See Oil: The slippery lifeline)
• Industrial nations are the biggest consumers of oil
- Impacts of oil consumption fall disproportionately on the developing nations
• There are approximately 40,000 oil fields in the world. But only 38 ‘super-giant’ fields dominate crude oil reserves
- USA, which produces only about three per cent of the oil, consumes 30 per cent. Fossil fuels account for 85 per cent of US energy expenditures
• Gas flaring contributes to 35 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and 12 million tonnes of methane to global warming annually
• Large-scale oilspills (over 10 million gallons) have occurred almost every year since the 1960s. In 1999, approximately 32 million gallons of oil spilled worldwide into marine and inland environs as a result of 257 oil transportation accidents
- Oil refineries and transport efforts account for about 46 per cent of the estimated 3.2 million tonnes of oil that muck up oceans each year
• Refineries in the US are often located near African-American and Native American population centres
• There are over 700 oil refineries around the world, and in 1994 about 1,219,000 workers were employed in oil refineries
- Female petrochemical workers, exposed to organic solvents, have 53 per cent more chances of having prolonged menstrual cycles.
| The country that wants this resource most isn’t the one that has it. | |||
| Number of global oil drilling sites | |||
| Region | Land | Off-shore | Total |
| Europe | 39 | 50 | 89 |
| Middle East | 141 | 28 | 169 |
| Africa | 32 | 28 | 60 |
| Latin America | 218 | 52 | 270 |
| Asia Pacific | 93 | 61 | 154 |
| Canada | 339 | 5 | 444 |
| USA | 776 | 140 | 916 |
| Mexico | 38 | 6 | 44 |
| TOTAL | 1,776 | 360 | 2,146 |
| Proven oil reserves (2000) | |||
| Region | Barrels (in billions) | Percentage of total | |
| Africa | 74.8 | 7.1 | |
| Asia Pacific | 44.0 | 4.2 | |
| Europe | 19.1 | 1.8 | |
| Former Soviet Union | 65.3 | 6.2 | |
| Middle East | 683.6 | 65.3 | |
| North America | 64.4 | 6.2 | |
| South and Central America | 95.2 | 9.1 | |
| TOTAL | 1046.4 | 100 | |
| OECD* | 84.8 | 8.1 | |
| OPEC** | 814.4 | 77.8 | |
| Note: *OECD members: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, USA. **OPEC members: Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE, Venezuela. Source: Harvard Medical School | |||
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