Sources of Statistics

The sources for large amounts of oil around the planet are reducing in number. Yet in order to grasp some idea of the changes that are taking place, it can be useful to visit some of the source points for information at intervals, to see how things are progressing. One of the largest (in fact at the moment the largest, since Saudi Arabia has cut back) is the Russian Federation. Each week they provide statistics on how much they are producing in a variety of energy fuels. Given the recent reports that overall energy production in Russia has fallen over the past year, it might therefore be useful to quote from the most recent report that they have up, which is for yesterday.

Crude oil production was 1.3 million tons (multiply by 7.33 to get barrels – in this case 9.74 million barrels a day, of which the largest amount (2.25 mbd) came from Rosneft and 1.85 mbd came from Lukoil. The total amount of crude oil refined in the RF was 4.8 mbd.

In terms of natural gas Gazprom produced 1.47 billion cu. m. of the total of 1.81 billion cu. m. generated yesterday.


The RF produced a total of 781,000 tons of coal, of which 266,000 tons was surface mined and the rest came from underground.

In terms of Electricity generated by other sources, Nuclear provided 453 MM kWh; Hydro provided 461 MM kWh; and the thermal power plants (coal, gas and oil) provided 2,133 MM kWh. The total (including some small independent utilities) was some 3,199 MM kWh.

These are interesting numbers to correlate to. So we may come back to this page over the year.

OPEC produces its own report on oil production each year the World Oil Outlook, and it can be obtained and downloaded. They see total crude capacity this year being 39.7 mbd for crude (up 0.9 mbd from 2008) and non-gas liquids and other liquids adds another 6 mbd for a total of 45.7 mbd in 2009.
They see world demand as running significantly below the volumes that OPEC can produce, particularly with Iraq as a member.

Canadian statistics (important since they are our best supplier) can be found at Statistics Canada.

And Mexico produces statistics on their production which shows a December production of 3.08 mbd, relative to a production of 3,333 mbd in December 2007.