Who has the oil and who wants it?

• Position: GRAPH: INTERNATIONAL

Saudi Arabia's position as the world's top oil producer is a key reason why the U.S. is its Longtime ally (see article, p. 14). Even though the U.S. is No. 2 in production, it uses much more oil than it produces. And the U.S. is not alone. Few of the world's top oil users produce enough to cover their needs. The world's five biggest economies (U.S., China, Japan, Germany, and France) all consume more oil than they produce, meaning they need to buy oil from other countries. That's an economic boon for nations like Saudi Arabia, which produces about four times as much oil as it uses.

These graphs show the 10 countries that produced he most oil and the 10 that consumed the host oil in 2012.

ANALYZE THE GRAPHS

(1) Which country consumes just over 10 million barrels of oil per day?

a Russia

b the U.S.

c China

d India

2 Saudi Arabia produces--more barrels of oil per day than the U.S. does.

a about 600,000

b about 3 million

c almost 5 million

d about 6 million

3 On average, each day the U.S. consumes about --the oil it produces.

a 98 percent of

b 1.7 times

c 2.5 times

d 3.1 times

4 Which of the following countries produces more oil than it consumes?

a Brazil

b Canada

c Japan

d all of the above

5 You can infer from these two graphs that Mexico consumes--.

a less oil than Canada does

b less oil than it produces

c less than 3 million barrels a day

d all of the above

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

(1) In what ways has the world come to depend on oil? What uses for it can you think of in the home, in industry, in transportation? What might life be like if oil and its products didn't exist?

(2) For years, U.S. leaders have...