|
|
The next chart kind of puts this in a global perspective. This is a chart which shows what the size of the countries of the world would look like if their size were relevant to the amount of oil reserves that they have. And you notice here that Saudi Arabia dominates the world. That's because Saudi Arabia may--we aren't really sure because they won't open their books. Saudi Arabia may have 22 percent of all the reserves in the world.
You may remember, oh, 6 weeks or a couple months ago, there was a WikiLeaks expose that said that maybe the Saudis had overestimated their oil reserves by as much as 40 percent. So the map might not look quite like this, but relatively like this.
Now, why would they overestimate their reserves?
When OPEC couldn't produce more oil than they were producing and they were all anxious for more revenues, OPEC decided that they would limit their production so as to keep the price of oil up. And so they permitted each of the countries to pump a percentage of their reserves.
And so if you look back at the history of this, you will see that, without finding any new fields, their reserves could go up 50 percent, sometimes their reserves doubled. It was kind of a contest amongst liars, because the more you said you had, the more you could pump because you could pump a percentage of what your reserves were. So we really aren't sure what these reserves are because they will not open their books, but it's roughly like this. Certainly, the largest reserves of all the oil are in Saudi Arabia. |
