Saudi Arabia, Russia, US produced most oil in 2013, BP report says

Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States were the top oil producers in 2013, according to BP's latest report. At the same time, the US was also the biggest consumer of oil in the world, with China as the second-biggest oil consumer.

Last week, BP (NYSE: BP) released their Statistical Review of World Energy 2014. I have been diving into the report, and as always will write a series of articles based on the latest results. Today I want to provide an update of the world’s Top 10 oil producers for 2013 based on the BP report.

Note that BP’s definition of “oil” includes crude oil, tight oil, oil sands and natural gas liquids (NGLs — the liquid content of natural gas where this is recovered separately). Their definition excludes liquid fuels from other sources such as biomass and derivatives of coal and natural gas (e.g., coal-to-liquids, or CTL).

Many people may not realize that while the US and China are the world’s leading oil consumers, they are also major oil producers. It’s just that both countries consume more than they produce. Thus, among the Top 10, they are the only two countries that are net importers of oil.

One caveat is that while the “Delta” gives an idea of whether a country is a net importer or exporter, it doesn’t include the impact of finished product imports and exports. In 2013 the US exported 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of finished products like diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel, and imported 2.1 million bpd of finished products. This 1.1 million bpd net export of finished products partially offsets our crude oil imports. Or, another way to think about it is that if we didn’t import or export finished products, our crude oil imports would have been lower in 2013 as some of those oil imports were used to refine products for export.