Basic facts about Petrol

The modern age of the petroleum industry is said to have begun with the success of mechanical oil drilling achieved by an American engineer named Drake in Pennsylvania in 1859. The petroleum industry began in Japan with the establishment of the Yugen Sekinin Nihon Sekiyu Kaisha in Niigata Prefecture in 1888, and its success in the mechanical drilling of the Amase seabed (Niigata Prefecture) in 1891.

Petroleum accounts for about 40% of the primary energy* used in the world today.
The Middle East leads petroleum exports, accounting for almost 30% of the world's production and almost 45% of the total export. While the United States is the world's second largest producer of petroleum, it is also the world's largest consumer. Since it cannot produce enough to meet its own needs, it also ranks as the world's largest importer.

Low-priced petroleum was in steady supply from the Middle East until the 1970s, but the two oil crises caused the price to rise and brought relative instability to the supply.
This prompted the developed countries to promote greater energy conservation, while developing petroleum resources outside of the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries)* region. Greater efforts were also made in developing alternative energy sources, such as nuclear power generation. As a result, petroleum exports from areas other than the Middle East increased and prices were determined according to the balance between supply and demand. This led to a relatively stable period in the latter 1980s.

However, dependency on the Middle East has recently risen once again. This is because the production volume of the former Soviet Union, which was previously the world's largest petroleum producer, suffered a significant decrease, and domestic demand in Asian oil-producing countries started increasing in the early 1990s, causing a reduction in their export volume.
Rising dependency on the Middle East is expected to continue, and the extreme geographical concentration of these exporting countries suggests future problems in supply stability and increasingly high prices.

OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries): An organization of oil-producing countries formed in September 1960 to protect their interests. The organization consisted of 11 member countries as of September 1998: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Venezuela, Qatar, Indonesia, Libya, UAE, Algeria, and Nigeria. OPEC produced 42% of the world's crude petroleum in 1997 and, as of December 1997, accounted for 78% of the confirmed crude petroleum reserves.