Oil Consuming Nations

Global Overview


It is undoubtedly clear today that the “Northern Countries” (or Industrialized Countries), who concentrate the major part of oil needs in the World but not the adequate oil reserves to sustain these needs, are totally dependent on oil imports to keep their economies on the move. In the United States Of America, for instance, out of the total national energy consumption, forty percent came from oil in nineteen ninety-eight (nearly twenty-five percent of the worldwide oil consumption) while its proven oil reserves represent only three percent of the worldwide oil reserves ! So, apart from the reliance on foreign oil deliveries we can even notice the weight of oil companies in the economy at a national scale. So the main question one could ask is at what extent the Industrialized Countries, backbone of the World Global Economy, depend on crude oil imports ? We will answer the question through a comparison between the oil consumption, the oil production and oil imports of the top-ten oil consuming nations around the Globe.


Top-Ten Oil Consuming Nations’ Comparison


Consumption Production Imports D.O.F.O.D.


USA 20.588 8.331 12.220 59.35 %


China 7.274 3.858 3.438 47.26 %


Japan 5.222 0.125 5.097 97.61 %


Russia 3.103 9.677 NONE NONE


Germany 2.630 0.147 2.483 94.41 %


India 2.534 0.847 1.687 66.57 %


Canada 2.218 3.288 NONE NONE


Brazil 2.183 2.166 NONE NONE


South Korea 2.157 0.007 2.150 99.67 %


Saudi Arabia 2.068 10.665 NONE NONE


NB1 : D.O.F.O.D. stands for “Dependence On Foreign Oil Deliveries”
NB2 : The data is to be considered in million of crude oil barrels per day


To round-up the analysis ; we can say, knowing that the energy sector is the backbone of every modern economy and that the oil business is the backbone of the energy sector itself (40 % in the US for example), that oil companies constitute a powerful lobby in every industrialized country and moreover, considering that these countries themselves account for more than 5/6th of the Global Economy, that these oil companies are a powerful and influential lobby at a worldwide scale as well.

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