Russia’s Oil Reserves by the Numbers
A lucrative source of state revenue feels the squeeze.
September 12, 2017
1. Russia has the world’s eighth-largest proven oil reserves, at 80 billion barrels.
2. This oil wealth, along with natural gas resources, provided much of the funding Vladimir Putin used for the first decade or more of his leadership.
3. Russia is the second-largest crude oil exporter by volume.
4. The arrival of sanctions over the 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, along with falling world oil prices, has squeezed the Russian economy over the past few years.
5. There are few signs of improvement on either the sanctions environment or global crude prices.
6. Among the so-called BRIC countries, Russia leads easily in the size of its proven oil reserves. China ranks 13th with 25.6 billion barrels in 2017.
7. Brazil, whose state-owned Petrobras is at the center of recent political scandals, ranks 15th, at 13 billion barrels.
8. India has proven oil reserves of just 4.2 billion barrels, ranking 24th worldwide.
9. Russia’s neighbor Kazakhstan, the largest former Soviet Republic after Russia itself, has a further 30 billion barrels in proven reserves.
10. Kazakhstan’s proven oil reserves therefore rank 12th worldwide, between the United States and China.
Sources: The Globalist Research Center, U.S. EIA, World Factbook