The NEW Oil Age Poster (Dec 2010)

This is the newly updated December 2010 edition of The Oil Age Poster. Oil forms the basis of our industrial age, powering everything we know as modern, from automobiles to airplanes to power plants to plastics. Colorful and authoritative, this poster traces the history of the Oil Age from its beginnings in the hills of western Pennsylvania to its rise as the engine of global industrial economies.


Two hundred years of the Oil Age are depicted in the poster's main chart, which features a colorful year-by-year rendering of Colin Campbell's Depletion Model. Historical annotations as well as detailed data on production, trade and reserves make this poster a versatile tool for presenting the realities and implications of global oil production and its impending peak.

US Minerals Databrowser

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) is the administrative branch in charge of managing information regarding mineral resources within the United States. Its minerals information function that collects, analyzes, and disseminates data that describe current production and consumption of about 100 mineral commodities, both domestically and internationally for approximately 180 countries.The goal of the US Minerals Databrowser is to make it easier to extract meaningful information from this valuable dataset. The US Minerals Databrowser provides several different visualization styles, each tailored to answer a specific set of question regarding the USGS Minerals dataset.

US Production / Exports

This visualization uses the production, apparent consumption, imports and exports fields from the dataset. Net exports are calculated as exports - imports. This plot highlights how sustainable US use of a particular mineral is.

World Production / Price

This visualization plots both US and world annual production of each mineral. The nominal price per ton as well as the inflation adjusted price (in 1998 dollars) are overlain. This plot highlights the interplay between price and production as anticipated by basic economics -- high prices should bring about increased production for globally fungible commodities.

Price Evolution

Plotting inflation adjusted prices against global production create interesting plots that give insight into how well the price signal works for a particular mineral.

Usage History

Usage patterns for any mineral will change as new uses are found and older applications are discontinued. The Usage History plots historical timelines of consumption in all the major usage categories.

Usage Pie

Pie charts provide a quick, intuitive view of relative consumption in each category for a single year to answer the question: "What is this mineral used for?"

BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2010

For 59 years, the BP Statistical Review of World Energy has provided high-quality, objective and globally consistent data on world energy markets. The Review is one of the most widely respected and authoritative publications in the fi eld of energy economics, used for reference by the media, academia, world governments and energy companies. A new edition is published every June.

BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2010 is available online at bp.com/statisticalreview. The website contains all the tables and charts found in the latest printed edition, plus a number of extras, including:

• Historical data from 1965 for many sections.
• Additional data for natural gas, coal, hydroelectricity, nuclear energy, electricity and renewables.
• An energy charting tool, where you can view predetermined reports or chart specifi c data according to energy type, region and year.
• An oil, natural gas and LNG conversion calculator.
• PDF versions and PowerPoint slide packs of the charts, maps and graphs, plus an Excel workbook of the historical data.

Energy Export Databrowser

Access to fossil fuels is one of the most important issues of our time. The world's largest economies are extremely dependent upon imported supplies of oil and gas. Understanding who produces and consumes oil, coal and natural gas is critical today and will remain so in the years ahead.

The Energy Export Databrowser hosted by Mazama Science uses data from the 2009 BP Statistical Review and displays coal, oil & natural gas production and consumption timelines for each country in the database and several political and geographic groupings of nations. Users can dynamically plot import/export curves to get a sense of who the major fossil fuel producers and consumers are and how this has changed in the last four decades.

Interpreting Results

Various interesting patterns appear in the data graphics. A few interpretations are provided here.

Peak ProductionUninterrupted by war or political upheaval and developed with the latest technology, the North Sea provides a very good example of a 'normal' (almost gaussian) production curve that is now past 'peak' production. It is anticipated that annual production volumes will continue to decline barring a dramatic new discovery.

Export Land ModelThe 'Export Land Model' proposed by Jeffrey Brown and Samuel Foucher describes how developing nations, enriched by oil profits, will grow economically and increase their own consumption of energy resources. Declining production and increasing consumption can rapidly turn an exporting nation into one that requires imports as exemplified by ex-OPEC member Indonesia.

Energy Intensity of Countries Visualized

Gapminder World shows the world’s most important trends. The following Visualization from Gapminder World shows the energy intensity of different countries around the world, powered by Trendalyzer from www.gapminder.org. Check out the live web chart here.

Gapminder is a non-profit venture – a modern “museum” on the Internet – promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

Energy Dependency of EU Countries

Europe's Energy Portal has statistics on the energy dependency of the EU-member states.
The portal aims to guide us Toward a low-carbon, environmentally friendly & sustainable future.

The gross energy consumption of the EU27 in 2008 was 1825 Million tonnes oil equivalent (Mtoe). Net imports was 1010 Mtoe which means an energy dependency ratio of 53.8%.

Energy Dependency of EU Countries (2008)

Energy consumption by EU-member states, their net imports and dependence rate in 2008.
The most important suppliers of crude oil and natural gas were Russia (33% of oil imports and 40% of gas imports) and Norway (16% and 23% respectively).

1. Cyprus 100%
2. Malta 100%
3. Luxembourg 98.9%
4. Ireland 90.9%
5. Italy 86.8%
6. Portugal 83.1%
7. Spain 81.4%
8. Belgium 77.9%
9. Austria 72.9%
10. Greece 71.9%
11. Latvia 65.7%
12. Lithuania 64%
13. Slovakia 64%
14. Hungary 62.5%
15. Germany 61.3%
16. Finland 54.6%
17. Slovenia 52.1%
18. France 51.4%
19. Bulgaria 46.2%
20. Netherlands 38%
21. Sweden 37.4%
22. Estonia 33.5%
23. Romania 29.1%
24. Czech Republic 28%
25. United Kingdom 21.3%
26. Poland 19.9%
27. Denmark -36.84% (net energy exporter)

The EU is working to reduce the effects of climate change and establish a common energy policy. By 2020 renewable energy should account for 20% of the EU's final energy consumption (8.5% in 2005). Consult the member state's renewable energy(RE) factsheets or browse through any of the latest charts.

Running the Numbers - Chris Jordan Photographs Mass Consumption

Startling digital photographs paint a disturbing yet strangely seductive picture of American life today. The new book Running the Numbers: An American Self-portrait by Chris Jordan provides an amazing visual impression of our mass consumption culture. Jordan's online gallery Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption has additional images that reflects on our consumer world.

Statistics can be daunting and dry: 1,000,000 trees cut down every year; 9,000,000 American children without health insurance; 2,000,000 plastic bottles used every five minutes; 2,300,000 adults incarcerated in U.S. prisons. Renowned photographer Chris Jordan brings these staggering numbers to life in manipulated digital photographs that are at once alluring and shocking. A landscape of toothpicks, each representing a felled tree, stretches into the horizon; a looping maze of plastic cups reveal how many are used each day on airplane flights; fashioned from soda cans, a replica of a Seurat masterpiece becomes a lesson in waste; and thousands of Barbie dolls—representing the number of breast augmentations performed each year—combine to depict a woman’s torso. Filled with astonishing photographs of surprising beauty, this book, manufactured from recycled materials, helps us grasp visually the potential consequences of our culture of waste.

Oil barrels (2008)
Depicts 28,000 42-gallon barrels, the amount of oil consumed in the United States every two minutes (equal to the flow of a medium-sized river).

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Light Bulbs (2008)
Depicts 320,000 light bulbs, equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage (inefficient wiring, computers in sleep mode, etc.).

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