Saudi Arabia to Get the Last Barrel of Oil on Earth?

The last barrel of oil on Earth will be Saudi Arabia’s, the head of the Ministry of Energy of the Kingdom of Khalid al-Falikh claimed at the Forum ‘Future Investment Initiative’.

He is also confident that when that time comes, Saudi Aramco will still be functioning. The Saudi state oil giant has access to about 25% of the reserves of "black gold,” he said. “No other company possesses such resources in the world”.

Yet, according to the World Energy Statistical Review of 2015, Saudi Arabia owns 15.7% of the world's oil reserves and is second place in the world in this regard. In first place is Venezuela with 17.5% of the planetary oil resources.

True, the Venezuelan state-owned company PDVSA is not able to extract all this oil. The Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company has activities in exploration, production, refining and exporting oil, as well as exploration and production of natural gas. Since its founding on 1 January 1976 with the nationalization of the Venezuelan oil industry, PDVSA has dominated the oil industry of Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil exporter.

In general, according to experts worldwide, while maintaining the current level of consumption, the world's proven oil reserves will last another 50 years. At present, the total volume is 1.7 trillion barrels.

However, the situation can be changed by unexplored arctic resources. Even according to preliminary estimates of the reserves of the Lomonosov Ridge, which Russia claims, the volume is about 35 billion barrels.

And if geological exploration takes these resources seriously, especially in 20-30 years, when the technologies for discovering oil deposits will multiply to exceed the current efficiency, it may turn out that the world's hydrocarbon production will last much longer than 50 years.

Dimitri Dolaberidze