世界上还剩下多少石油?

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Let’s begin in the Mid East, which has about 23 of the world’s proven oil reserves. Saudi Arabia is at the top, with 266 billion barrels. Iraq and Iran are also rich in crude along with Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. But it might surprise you that Canada has a lot of oil too, some 178 billion barrels. Much of it rests in the tar sands of Alberta. It is a gigantic strip mining operation. Environmentalists call it a disaster, leaving behind toxic chemicals, stripping forests and contaminating the water supply.

Now, let’s go south to Venezuela and parts of Mexico. Much of their oil, like Canada's, feeds the voracious appetite for crude in the United States, which is the world’s biggest consumer of oil. Yet, did you know that the U.S. has some 21 billion barrels in reserve, so why doesn’t it produce more? Well, the U.S. government bans most offshore drilling except in the Gulf of Mexico for environmental reasons.

So, what does Russia fit in all of these? It's flush with cash from its oil reserves and it is the world’s second largest producer.

And let’s take a look at Africa now. Libya has the most oil reserves on the continent, about 39 billion barrels. And further south, Nigeria has lots of crude but lots of problems too. Militants routinely attack oil instillations and kidnap workers, disrupting production and making the oil prices soar.

All that’s said, who is going to quench the global thirst for oil in the future, well, it could be that Brazil becomes the US major exporter with the discovery of a huge offshore oil field. The oil is in a great depth, some four miles below the ocean’s surface, but experts say, it is recoverable.

And that may be the future for oil, going to great extremes to get it out off the ground. Analysts estimate there is another trillion barrels of oil yet to be discovered, but they say it would be found in remote places like the Arctic Ocean. So, it’s going to cost a lot of money to get it from the ground into your fuel tank.