While I don't have an issue with your comments about reserve numbers, I'm not sure it relates to this topic. The numbers we are looking at here are historical production/consumption/export data and I think BP is a good source for this.

Great information!

Thanks

Addressing all comments upthread.

I agree that reserves are a very problematic issue if you want to present people with "just the facts". I'm not really sure yet what I want to do with the reserve numbers as so many of them, particularly for the Middle East, are clearly fabricated.

As for other resources, the visualization should lend itself to any resource that is traded globally. Coffee anyone?

Before I stray too far afield with coal and the like I'd like to allow folks to choose other datasets so that the "Resource:" selector might look like this:

Oil (BP)
Oil (EIA)
Oil (IEA)
Oil (OPEC)
Nat. Gas (BP)
etc.

Or perhaps the ability to choose the dataset to work with (BP, EIA, etc.) should be reserved for an "Advanced Features" tab.

Reseves aren't really the problem - we know they are huge (of the order of trillions of barrels) and are of no real importance for the next twenty years or so - and anyway many of the reserves may turn out to just be resource or lies - I wouldn't waste any time on them.

It's the flow rates that are important for peak oil purposes and this is the best tool, by far, that I have ever seen to quickly and graphically show this - good work, you have saved me lots of effort, thanks.

I would definitely like as many up-to-date datasets as possible because they are all in error to some extent.

My biggest wish? ... If possible I would like to see a grouping which is just the nations that have 'net exports'. Maybe a tool that allows you to select which countries you want to sum together?

Great tool, many thanks.

Requests: For Country add "World total" (some numbers of course make less sense, but production/consumption should come obvious)

As for labeling, this may sound technical, but I would personally appreciate: if reserves are added, use P level ratings (P, P2, P3, etc).

Also a wish, don't add R/P ratios even if people ask for them :)

I might also be enlightening to some people to be able to overlay an inflation adjusted price graph (perhaps a weighted average of the top 3 crude prices, instead of using WTI exlusively?)

Granted, that's lots of work. The browser is already very useful as it is.