The EIA publishes Annually a list of World Proved Reserves of Crude Oil. Though all charts in this post use the EIA data, BP, the IEA and virtually every other reporting agency in the world uses basically the same data. It is my contention that this data is misleading and totally meaningless. This is especially true of OPEC Middle East Reserves. However because this data is taken as gospel by the media and perhaps 90% of energy analysts in the world, this misinformation becomes a serious problem.
But first let’s look at the data. It dates to 2014 in most cases but some data only goes to 2013. All data is billion barrels of reserves.
The EIA said we had 1,646 billion barrels of proved reserves in 2013. Other agencies put that figure a bit higher but we will go with this. And just where are these reserves located?
Almost half of the world’s proved reserves are supposed to be located in the Middle East. Actually it would be well over 60% if it were not for the recent additions to world reserves by the Venezuela Bitumen and the Canadian Tar sands.
