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Oil Depletion

Map No. 320

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Between 1965 and 2004, an estimated 123 billion tonnes of oil were used worldwide. For every person alive in 2002, 19.7 tonnes of oil were used over this 40 year period.

The biggest oil users over this period were the United States, followed by Japan, the Russian Federation and Germany. The lowest oil usage per person was recorded in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Other territories probably used less oil than these three, but were missing data to confirm that.

This map shows where oil was used, not where it was extracted. The map does not compare oil use to the reserves available. No one can be certain of the how much oil remains. We do know how much we burn.

"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel." Saudi Arabian saying, undated

Territory size shows the proportion of all oil used between 1965 and 2004 that was used there.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page