Saudi Arabia is the Second World’s Biggest Oil Reserve
The Russian-Ukrainian war has raised many questions about the future of global energy supplies; especially after US President Joe Biden signed an executive order last week banning imports of gas, coal, and oil from Russia to the US.
As the crisis continues to escalate, some European countries still exclude the energy option from the series of sanctions imposed on Russia, as they rely mainly on Russian oil and gas supplies, which constitute more than a third of their energy imports.
The German data company “Statista” monitored the most prominent countries in terms of the volume of global oil reserves, as only two countries accounted for more than a third of the world’s reserves.
While Saudi Arabia was the largest exporter of crude oil in 2020, with a market share of 17%, it was the second-largest in terms of global oil reserves, with 298 billion barrels.
Venezuela leads the world in terms of oil reserves, amounting to 304 billion barrels, but it is not traditionally known as a large exporter of this commodity. However, the other countries on the list, Canada for example, have the third-largest oil reserves until the end of 2020 with 168 billion barrels, representing 10% of the global reserves, while the value of their oil exports amounted to 48 billion dollars in the same year, making it the sixth worldwide in the export of oil.
In the event of a complete ban on Russian oil imports, this will enhance the dependence of importing countries on Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and Iraq.
Energy industry experts view Biden’s move as largely symbolic. For example, US imports of crude oil from Russia accounted for only 8% of total imports of that specific commodity in 2021, and the US produced 33.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas versus imports of 2.5 trillion cubic feet in 2020.
