Economy

Top Countries With the Most Crude Oil Reserves

Published

1 year ago

2023/02/22

Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil is found accumulated in various porous rock formations in Earth’s crust and is extracted for burning as fuel or for processing into chemical products.

The name petroleum covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude oil and petroleum products that consist of refined crude oil.

A fossil fuel, petroleum, is formed when large quantities of dead organisms, mostly zooplankton and algae, are buried underneath sedimentary rock and subjected to both prolonged heat and pressure.

Oil accounts for approximately 3% of GDP and is one of the most important commodities in the world.

This natural resource has been extracted for years by most countries blessed with it. There have been fears some of them might run out of reserve.

Oil reserves estimate the amount of crude oil located in a particular economic region with the potential of extraction.

Here are the countries with the most oil reserves across the world according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 2022 bulletin.

OPEC is a cartel of 13 countries. Founded on 14 September 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members, it has, since 1965, been headquartered in Vienna, Austria, although Austria is not an OPEC member state.

The founding members are;

Iran
Iraq
Kuwait
Saudi Arabia
Venezuela

They were later joined by these countries;

Qatar (1961)
Indonesia (1962)
Libya (1962)
The United Arab Emirates (1967)
Algeria (1969)
Nigeria (1971)
Ecuador (1973)
Gabon (1975)
Angola (2007)
Equatorial Guinea (2017)
Congo (2018)

Ecuador suspended its membership in December 1992, rejoined OPEC in October 2007, but decided to withdraw its membership of OPEC effective 1 January 2020.

Indonesia suspended its membership in January 2009, reactivated it again in January 2016, but decided to suspend its membership once more at the 171^st Meeting of the OPEC Conference on 30 November 2016.

Gabon terminated its membership in January 1995. However, it rejoined the Organization in July 2016. Qatar terminated its membership on 1 January 2019.