Examine the global patterns and trends in the production and consumption of oil and discuss its geopolitical and environmental impacts.

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Luis Rebollar                                                                                                19-11-12

Geography Essay

Examine the global patterns and trends in the production and consumption of

oil and discuss its geopolitical and environmental impacts

Lately, countries around the world have been dramatically affected environmentally and geopolitically, mainly due to the rise in demand for oil. Both the production and consumption of oil have been rising progressively since the early 1980‘s. As a result, countries such as Ecuador and Canada have been forced to deal with oil spills and the contamination of rain forests, while others such as Iraq have had to tolerate the burden of “resource wars”.

Over the past decades, the production and consumption of oil has been steadily increasing. By looking at Figure 1, it can be said that oil production has barely increased since 1983, when it was at 53,000 thousand barrels per day (tbpd). Today, a bit less than 80,000 are produced. However, global oil consumption has been increasing continuously. We can see that in 1993, the global consumption of oil was approximately 56,000 thousands barrels per day, and that it has been gradually increasing for the pas 20 years. Today, we consume about 87,000 thousand barrels per day. Figure 2 shows the oil production and consumption by country.

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Figure 1: Global Oil Production and Consumption by Year

Figure 2: Gobal Oil Production (left) and Consumption (right) by year

Overall, the production and consumption of oil has steadily increased because as countries develop and industrialize, their oil consumption grows with their economy. Today, China’s and India’s economies have been growing very rapidly, and the impact on oil demand has already begun. Developed countries will eventually have to increase their oil-consuming efficiency in order to decrease their demand, and are likely to adapt faster if oil prices continue to rise.

It is clear from Figure 2 that the ...

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