Chart of Major Oil Producers and Consumers

Coal has been used since the industrial revolution but only in the last 100 years have huge quantities of oil and gas been removed from underground reservoirs. Oil and gas are used as fuel energy in combustion engines and as "feed stock" for other industries — raw materials for the manufacture of other chemicals, such as plastics and agricultural fertilizer. There is a limited amount of fossil fuel. It is not "renewable" and there is no known way to make more. The energy stored in oil is significantly greater than in any other currently available source. There is no other equivalently cheap and powerful energy available from nuclear energy, natural gas, solar power, wind power, hydrogen, biomass or coal.

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Sources

BP Statistical Review of World Energy, June 2019; www.bp.com/statisticalreview

Tags: oil, petroleum production, petroleum consumers, major oil producers and consumers, fossil-fuel