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World oil reserves
Table 1 lists the 20 countries with the most proved oil reserves. This includes heavy oil sand reserves, which are the majority of reserves in Venezuela and Canada.
Reported world proved oil reserves are 1.3 trillion bbl, although some peak oil theorists believe that this value is incorrect. They believe that some OPEC members inflate their reserves so that they can receive a higher production allocation. I have no reason to believe that these numbers are not approximately accurate and reasonable.
Table 2 lists the world's top 30 producing countries. Their production rates should approximately correlate to reserves. More reserves should have a higher production rate.
In this respect, the US does not follow this correlation. It is producing 5.47 million b/d from only 20 billion bbl of reserves. Countries such as Canada and Venezuela have the capacity to increase production, although most of their reserves are very heavy oil, which limits production rates because of the low oil viscosity.
If Saudi Arabia has 263 billion bbl of reserves, and I believe that it does, it could also increase production substantially as it has done at times. Saudi Arabia has elected to operate as the world's swing producer, increasing its production when the world demand rose and decreasing production when demand lessened.
Saudi Arabia would increase production happily if the world demanded it, and it is aware that a too high oil price decreases demand and starts the world to look for alternatives.
The US produces oil at about half the rate of Saudi Arabia with less than one tenth of the reserves.
Other countries also have capacity to increase their production, and one way to gauge this is to calculate reserves life at current production rates.
Table 3 lists the 30 countries with the most reserves life. Note that the top two countries are Venezuela and Canada because of their heavy oil reserves. Any country with more than 30 years of reserves life probably has the potential to increase its production.
The US does not appear on this list because US reserves life is only 10.35 years. The country cannot keep producing oil at its current high rates relative to its reserves unless continual drilling of new wells develops more resources. Its production rate will plummet if drilling stops.
References
1. Hubbert, M.K., "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels," API Drilling and Production Practices, Spring Meeting, San Antonio, Mar. 7-9, 1956.
2. Hubbert, M.K., "Energy Resources", in National Research Council Committee on Resources and Man, W.H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1969.
3. Deffeyes, K.S., Hubbert's Peak, The Impending World Oil Shortage, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
4. Deffeyes, K.S., Beyond Oil, The View from Hubbert's Peak, New York: Hill and Wang, 2005.
5. Deffeyes, K.S., When Oil Peaked, New York: Hill and Wang, 2010.
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