Who has the oil?
Dec 26th, 2007 by MESH
From MESH Admin
What is the most effective way to represent the strategic significance of the Persian Gulf? One alternative is to emphasize its dominance of world oil reserves and exports, via a graph or map. Here are three approaches—the first one, conventional; the other two, innovative and even dramatic.
The first, prepared by British Petroleum (BP), is a straightforward map of proved reserves, with an accompanying graph.
The second is a proportional map of crude petroleum exports, prepared by Worldmapper. In this projection, the size of each region and country reflects its proportion of worldwide net exports of crude petroleum. (When imports are larger than exports, the territory is not shown at all.)
(Click on this map to enlarge it; click here to download a .pdf poster of the map and accompanying statistics.)
Finally, there is this proportional map of oil reserves, sourced from BP. This approach makes it easier to disaggregate countries. (The map isn’t legible at this size, so click on it to enlarge it.)