About this chart race
The lead changes hands eight times in 125 years. The Russian Empire is ahead at the start — 120 TWh against America's 99 in 1900 — but the United States takes over in 1902 and then holds first place for seventy-three consecutive years. The Soviet Union catches it in 1975 and peaks at 7,168 TWh in 1983; the 1991 collapse hands the lead to Saudi Arabia. Between 2007 and 2011 Russia and Saudi Arabia swap first place four times, neither able to keep it. Then shale changes everything: American output goes from 3,874 TWh in 2010 to 10,036 TWh in 2024 — two and a half times higher in fourteen years — retaking the lead in 2017 and reaching the largest annual output any producer has ever managed. Watch the bottom of the chart too: Venezuela sits second or third in the world from the 1930s through the 1970s, and has fallen to eighteenth by 2024.
A note on country names: long historical series like this one are compiled for present-day borders, so a figure shown under a modern country for a year before that country existed refers to the territory it now covers, not to a state that was on the map at the time. Where a well-known historical name applies to the whole span it is used instead, which is why Russia appears here as Russia / USSR.
This animated ranking shows how oil production changed across 33 series between 1900 and 2024. The bars re-order themselves as the years advance, so overtakes are visible as they happen rather than hidden inside a table. Use the list on the left to choose exactly who competes, drag the slider to jump to any year, or open the table view to read the underlying numbers.
As of 2024, United States leads with 10,036 TWh.
Included in this race
United States, Russia / USSR, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Canada, Iraq, China, Venezuela, Mexico, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Kuwait, Norway, Libya, United Kingdom, Nigeria, Algeria, Indonesia, Qatar, Argentina, Colombia, Egypt, India, Malaysia, Romania, Brunei, Trinidad and Tobago, Peru, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Myanmar, Japan.
Source
Data from Energy Institute; U.S. EIA; Etemad & Luciani — via Our World in Data. Check the stated period and methodology. Animated transitions between source observations are visual interpolation, not additional measurements.
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