How Much Energy Is Enough? - The Renaissance of Renewable Energy - page 65

(Zecca and Zulberti 2006 ). Rather, we are likely to rely more on 'unconventional' oil in
Canada, Venezuela and Russia, which will become more profitable to extract as oil prices
rise.
The third unpredictable factor affecting oil production is, of course, demand. Demand
in the most industrialised countries has probably already peaked (BP 2011 ) , but this has
been more than offset by growing demand from rapidly growing economies such as China,
India and Brazil. Demand for oil is far from equally distributed throughout the world.
The wealthier industrialised countries are still the biggest consumers of oil, but several
'developing' countries are hot on their heels.
The distribution of the world's oil reserves is even more uneven. Fifty per cent of the
world's known reserves are located in just five countries clustered around the Persian Gulf.
Another25percentarelocatedinfiveothercountries(see Figure3.7 ) .Thisfactor,asmuch
as impending oil scarcity, has fed the desire in many countries to reduce dependence on oil
and to find alternative sources of energy.

Figure 3.7. Proven reserves of oil. Canadian and Venezuelan tar sands are not taken into
account (for comparison, see Table 3.11 ). Source: BP ( 2012 ).

Figure 3.8. Oil consumption by region. Source: BP ( 2012 ).

Table 3.11. Proven global reserves of fossil fuels and uranium

Coal
(billion
tons)

%
Global

Oil
(billion
barrels)

Conventional Total %

Global

United
States

237 28 Saudi

Arabia

265 265 16

Russian
Federation

157 18 Venezuela 77 297 18