This current series of posts is aimed at an overview of the top oil producing nations, seeking to establish how the ranking of the countries is changing from the original table that EIA put out in 2008. After looking at the conditions governing the top six, this was followed last week when I looked at the condition of the following three (Mexico, UAE and Kuwait) in a little detail, but having spent four posts on Veneuela in the recent past forebore going back there again.

It is worth recapping, however, that the initial order has changed, and that Russia is currently at the head of the League, slightly ahead of Saudi Arabia, with both producing somewhere around 10.2 mbd. I’ll go more into that detail as the posts focus in on the individual countries later. The United States' production, if one includes ethanol, is around 8.2 mbd, and this is in third place. China has moved into fourth place, slightly ahead of Iran which is followed by Canada. At present these six appear to be the only countries producing over 3 mbd.

In the next tier down I have already mentioned the United Arab Emirates, which have moved into 7th place, with a production of around 2.81 mbd, now ahead of Mexico, albeit perhaps barely (based on the addition of NGLs etc). As with the UAE Kuwait has been limiting production in line with OPEC requests, but while only producting at around 2.35 mbd at the moment, is looking to increase this to up to 3.5 mdb by 2015, which would move it into the top tier. Venezuela, although it too has some grandiose plans, based on the potential increases in production from their tar sands, is currently producing at down around 2.26 mbd. As I have mentioned Venezuela does have plans to raise production to 4 mbd by 2015. However recent commitments to China of up to 1 mbd and problems that Venezuela continues to have in meeting current obligations leaves a large question mark on those predictions.

And so we come to the lower half of the second tier.

Mr. Gabrielli, the CEO of Petrobras, gave a presentation in December 2009 in which he shows world oil capacity, including biofuels, peaking in 2010 due to oil capacity additions from new projects being unable to offset world oil decline rates.

Gabrielli states in his presentation that the world needs oil volumes the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every two years to offset future world oil decline rates.

This is a stronger statement than the one he gave in January 2009 in an interview with Business Week when he said the following.

According to the company's projections, production from existing fields will fall from a little over 80 million barrels a day to maybe half of that even if new techniques are used to slow their rate of decline. So just keeping global production flat is going to require lots of new fields and requires the world to replace one Saudi Arabia per three years.

Gabrielli is clearly concerned about declining future world oil production. His statements are now in alignment with those of other oil company executives including Sadad al-Husseini, former Aramco executive, who states that world oil production is on a peak plateau, and Total's CEO, Christophe de Margerie who doesn't see global oil production ever exceeding 89 million barrels per day (mbd). World oil production in December 2009 was only slightly lower at 86 mbd.

This is a guest post by Gail the Actuary.

1. I love my SUV. Why can't we continue to use oil and gas as in the past?

George W. Bush has given us one reason why we need to make changes - Unstable foreign oil supply. Al Gore has given us another reason - Climate change.

There is a third reason that trumps the first two - WE DON'T REALLY HAVE A CHOICE. Demand for both oil and natural gas continues to rise each year, as the result of China, India and other countries wanting to adopt a lifestyle more like that in the United States. As we saw in Oil Quiz - Test Your Knowledge, world oil supply is likely to decline in the near future. With demand increasing and supply decreasing, there is certain to be a significant gap in the not too distant future.

Natural gas is similar. Like oil, we started with a finite quantity of it, and it is now depleting. The main difference is that we are dealing primarily with a gap between North American supply and demand, rather than world supply and demand, because natural gas is difficult to transport. Demand is rising, because natural gas is viewed as a less-polluting source of energy.

Natural gas supply is likely to decline in the next few years, because most of the larger, more productive sites have already been tapped. New natural gas wells are getting smaller and smaller, so that more and more new wells need to come on line each year, just to stay even. For a while, we were able to make up our shortfall with imports from Canada, but these have begun to decline. In the next few years, both US production and imports from Canada will be declining. It is doubtful that liquified natural gas imports from overseas will be able to fill the gap.

(7 more questions and answers under the fold...along with a study guide! Go Gail Go!)

Taking a different approach, I decided to single out those countries that have made significant production increases in recent years — defined as any producer nation that has contributed an additional 0.5% to the current global liquids supply from fossil fuels (crude oil, condensates + natural gas liquids) since the year 2000. The result is shown in Figure 1.

Countries contributing at least a 0.5% increase since 2000 in world production of liquids fromfossil fuels (grey) versus the rest of world (blue). Does not include CTL or GTL. Data from BP — Figure 1

Will these difference makers deliver us from the turbulence & chaos of economic contraction and provide peak oil salvation?