• Slide 1 of 31: Oil is a valuable commodity for many countries, including some you might not expect. The price of oil was rising following the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines but the arrival of the Delta variant prompted the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to scale back its forecast for oil demand at the end of 2021. With the forecast set to rise to pre-pandemic levels this year, read on as we count down from the 30th largest producer to the world leader, based on 2020 data from BP's Statistical Review of World Energy 2021. 
  • Slide 3 of 31: Australia doesn’t typically fall among the world’s top 30 oil-producing countries, but as the world’s oil production patterns have been thrown into disarray by the coronavirus pandemic, the Land Down Under has snuck into the ranking. In 2016 Australia held more than 1.8 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, but the country’s dependence on imports has had to increase to fill a growing gap between consumption and production. In 2019 Australia produced 458,000 barrels of oil per day, and the country did what few nations were able to and increased output to reach 470,000 barrels per day in 2020. The country looks set to have had another stellar year in 2021, as it exported 9.35 million barrels that April – an 8% increase on the previous year – which was its largest monthly export since September 2020. Singapore buys the majority of Australia’s exported oil.
  • Slide 4 of 31: In line with fellow members of OPEC, Ecuador cut its oil production at the end of 2016 to help boost demand and raise the global oil price. As a result, the number of barrels produced a day dropped from 548,000 in 2016 to around 531,000 in 2019. Ecuador went on to suspend its OPEC membership in January 2020, and so was not pressured to cut its production to help stabilise prices during the coronavirus pandemic. Later that year the country suffered two broken pipelines as a result of landslides, and they caused dangerous oil spills in local indigenous communities and a halt to exports. In July 2021 extensive work was carried out to carve a new route for a pipeline in an attempt to avoid further loss of oil and damage to the local area.
 Oil is a valuable commodity for many countries, including some you might not expect. The price of oil was rising following the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines but the arrival of the Delta variant prompted the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to scale back its forecast for oil demand at the end of 2021. With the forecast set to rise to pre-pandemic levels this year, read on as we count down from the 30th largest producer to the world leader, based on 2020 data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2021.

The nations leading the world in oil production

Oil is a valuable commodity for many countries, including some you might not expect. The price of oil was rising following the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines but the arrival of the Delta variant prompted the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to scale back its forecast for oil demand at the end of 2021. With the forecast set to rise to pre-pandemic levels this year, read on as we count down from the 30th largest producer to the world leader, based on 2020 data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2021.