Petroleum and Natural Gas Proven Reserves, 2008, Top 10

Update: Please click on the link for the 2009 Petroleum and Natural Gas Proved Reserves.

The Energy Information Administration, a department of the U.S. Department of Energy, has recently released the 2008 proved reserves for petroleum and natural gas. Proved reserves are the amount of oil and gas in the ground that is "reasonably certain" to be extracted using current technology at current prices. The following are lists of the top ten countries for petroleum and natural gas proved reserves, with their quantities and percentage of the world total for 2008:

Petroleum - Billion Barrels
1. Saudi Arabia - 266.75 (20.03%)
2. Canada - 178.59 (13.41%)
3. Iran - 138.40 (10.39%)
4. Iraq - 115.00 (8.64%)
5. Kuwait - 104.00 (7.81%)
6. United Arab Emirates - 97.80 (7.34%)
7. Venezuela - 87.04 (6.54%)
8. Russian Federation - 60.00 (4.51%)
9. Libya - 41.46 (3.11%)
10. Nigeria - 36.22 (2.72%)

Notes: The world total of proved reserves is 1,331.70 billion barrels of petroleum. The total of the top ten countries makes up 84.50% of the world's proved reserves. Canada's proved reserves are estimated to be 5.4 billion barrels of conventional crude oil and 173.2 billion barrels of oil sands reserves. (Oil sands are much more costly to refine than conventional crude oil.)


Natural Gas - Trillion Cubic Feet
1. Russian Federation - 1,680.000 (27.16%)
2. Iran - 948.200 (15.33%)
3. Qatar - 905.300 (14.64%)
4. Saudi Arabia - 253.107 (4.09%)
5. United Arab Emirates - 214.400 (3.47%)
6. United States - 211.085 (3.41%)
7. Nigeria - 183.990 (2.97%)
8. Venezuela - 166.260 (2.69%)
9. Algeria - 159.000 (2.57%)
10. Iraq - 111.940 (1.81%)

Notes: The world total of proved reserves is 6,185.694 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The total of the top ten countries makes up 78.14% of the world's proved reserves. Venezuela moved past Algeria into the 8th spot for the 2008 listing, having been listed 9th last year.