BP: World Reserves of Fossil Fuels
View ArchiveAccording to the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy, total global reserves, by fossil fuel, are now:
Coal - 1,139 billion tonnes
Natural Gas - 187 trillion cubic meters
Crude Oil - 1,707 billion barrels
While these volumes may seem large at a glance, at today's level of extraction and production rates, BP's estimated proved reserves*, by fossil fuel, would be exhausted as follows:
Coal - year 2169
Natural Gas - year 2068
Crude Oil - year 2066
BP dutifully acknowledges the abundance of factors that could easily alter these projections, but these factors do not alter the global policy imperitive to support sustainable fossil fuel extraction and development. All we need now is to define "sustainable" against ever changing market, political, and social conditions.
* Estimated years of extraction-remaining are estimated as the ratio of proved reserves to production per year.
Sources: Crude Oil Reservs, Natural Gas Reservs, Coal Reservs, Crude oil prices, Natural Gas prices, Coal prices, Historical Energy Statistics.
Download
Download our latest ENERGY cheat sheet
It's a one pager PDF full of live links to energy-related data, statistics, and dashboards from leading industry sources. It will be a useful resource for any analyst, business executive, or researcher with an interest in the oil & gas industry, energy companies, biofuels and much more.
Related Data Insights
United States Coal: Revival or Decline?
In March, US President Donald Trump issued the “Energy Independence” executive order, requiring the US Environmental Protection Agency to rewrite the Clean Power Plan, a keystone of former President Obama’s efforts to address climate change. According to experts from the Trump administration, rejecting federal support for alternative energy and delaying the full transition of the US economy to renewable resources will reduce the US budget by approximately 18 percent. According to Trump, his order represents a historic step toward removing restrictions on US energy and abandoning the rules that cut jobs in the industry. Just as the...
BP: Coal Production and Consumption Worldwide
Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2015
BP Energy Production Forecast
Energy Production Forecast | Energy Consumption Forecast Source: BP Energy Outlook 2035, February 2015