​From the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia's war against Ukraine, a number of global crises have shaken the oil industry to its core over the last few years – and shown just how reliant we are on fossil fuels.

While much of the world is trying to cut back on oil in a bid to reduce carbon emissions, we still pumped out almost 90 million barrels of the black stuff every day last year. But which country produces the most?

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is set to cut global production by two million barrels a day from November 2022. With that in mind, read on to discover which nations produce the world's most oil, based on 2021 data from BP's Statistical Review of World Energy 2022 report. 

In 2021, a total of 398,000 barrels of oil were produced each day in Thailand, down from 421,000 a day in 2020 and 475,000 in 2019.

Like all oil-exporting countries, Thailand saw the price of its oil plummet in light of the coronavirus pandemic, prompting the drop in production.

Around 80% of Thailand's oil is extracted from offshore fields in the Gulf of Thailand. The country’s largest oil producer is the American company Chevron, which accounts for almost 70% of the country’s crude oil production. 

Before 2020, Australia wasn't considered to be one of the world's top oil producers.

However, as the world’s oil production patterns were thrown into disarray by the pandemic, the land Down Under managed to score itself a place in the rankings.

In both 2019 and 2020, Australia produced 453,000 barrels of oil per day. Despite a promising start to 2021, its total daily production rate has since fallen to 435,000. 

In line with fellow members of OPEC, Ecuador cut its oil production at the end of 2016 to help boost demand and raise global prices. As a result, the daily number of barrels produced by the nation fell from 548,000 in 2016 to 531,000 in 2019.

Ecuador went on to suspend its OPEC membership in January 2020, and so wasn't pressured to further cut its production to help stabilise prices during the pandemic.

Later that year, however, the country suffered two broken pipelines as a result of landslides, causing dangerous oil spills in local indigenous communities and bringing a halt to exports.

In July 2021, extensive work was carried out to carve a new route for a pipeline in a bid to avoid further oil loss and prevent damage to the local area. As a result, Ecuador's daily oil production saw a relatively small decrease from 479,000 to 473,000 million barrels a day between 2020 and 2021.

The second-largest oil producer in southeast Asia, Malaysia's daily output in 2020 was 616,000 barrels.

This marked a drop from 672,000 barrels the previous year, and the number dropped yet again to 573,000 in 2021.

In 2016, the country teamed up with other OPEC countries to cut its production levels to stabilise the global oil price, and did the same last year in response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Currently, several major oil projects are under development in deep-water areas in eastern Malaysia, including Shell's Malikai development. Malikai is a huge contributor to the country's total output thanks to its annual peak production of 60,000 barrels per day.

Producing 653,000 barrels a day in 2019, Egypt actually churned out 21,000 more barrels each day in 2018. And both of those figures are considerably less than the 726,000 barrels that the country was churning out on the daily in 2015...

Egypt's total daily figure fell to 632,000 barrels in 2020 due to the COVID-induced global slump, and dipped again to 608,000 last year.

That said, Egypt is a net importer of oil, which means that the country hasn't felt the effects of the oil price nosedive as harshly as others.

Oil production in Argentina decreased by around 20,000 barrels a day between 2019 and 2020. 

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the South American country was slowly starting to see a boom in how much oil it was drilling out.

Authorities are keen to restore this uptick as the country’s economy was already ailing before the pandemic, and the nation is currently facing its highest inflation levels in decades.

Argentina is increasingly turning to its gas reserves to tackle its economic problems, and its natural gas production could rise from four billion cubic feet a day to 5.4 billion cubic feet within the next five years, according to McKinsey.

McKinsey's research also shows that Argentina currently boasts the second-most abundant unconventional gas resources in the world, as well as the fourth-most abundant unconventional oil resources, the majority of which are found in the Vaca Muerta formation.

Despite all of this, the country's oil production actually increased to 627,000 barrels per day last year. 

Despite sitting on the world's richest reserves of oil – with more than 303 billion barrels to its name – Venezuela’s oil production fell dramatically between 2019 and 2020 due to severe economic and political crises in the country.

In 2020, Venezuela’s year-on-year daily production was down by more than 40%. That marked a whopping 80% drop from the glory days of 2010, when it produced more than 2.8 million barrels a day.

In August 2020, Venezuela’s crude oil production was at its lowest level since US Energy Information Administration (EIA) records began in 1973.

But the numbers have picked back up. Last year's daily output of 654,000 barrels per day saw the country rise from 27th to 24th spot in the global rankings, overtaking the likes of Malaysia, Egypt, and Argentina in the process. 

Indonesia suspended its membership of OPEC at the end of 2016 to avoid adhering to the organisation's hefty production cut.

After a moderate slowdown in output due to a lack of investment in 2017, southeast Asia's largest oil producer increased its production to 808,000 barrels a day in 2018.

In a bid to mitigate the damage caused by COVID-19, Indonesian oil and gas regulator SKK Migas introduced incentives to entice investment to keep coming into the sector.

This didn’t prevent production from sliding though, and in 2020 the country churned out 742,000 barrels each day. This number dropped again in 2021, falling to just 692,000.

Like Malaysia, Azerbaijan signed up to the OPEC deal in December 2016 and slashed production of its oil, which is mainly sourced offshore in the Caspian Sea.

In 2020, Azerbaijani oil fields extracted 716,000 barrels of the commodity a day, marking a reduction of 7.6% from 2019. The figure picked up again in 2021, landing at 722,000 barrels a day.

The oil and gas sector makes up 45% of Azerbaijan’s economy, and so the country certainly felt the effects of the tumbling oil prices triggered by COVID-19.

A series of militant attacks, including several bombings on the Bicentenario and the Caño Limón pipelines, has disrupted oil production in Colombia in recent years.

Despite the unrest, Colombia pumped out 886,000 barrels of oil a day in 2019, which is the highest amount that the country has produced since 2016.

Oil production fell to 781,000 barrels per day in 2020, with the figure plummeting by another 43,000 barrels last year. This could suggest that the combination of civil tension and global pandemic has cast a long shadow. 

India may import the bulk of the oil it consumes but the country's oil wells still produce considerable quantities of the black stuff.

In 2019, India churned out 830,000 barrels of oil a day – its lowest production rate in a decade – and, unsurprisingly, that figure fell during the coronavirus pandemic. India was producing 771,000 barrels each day in 2020, with the total dropping further to 746,000 in 2021. 

The Indian government is actively trying to increase oil production in the country, having hoped to reduce its crude oil import dependence by 10% by the end of this year.

However, plans haven't been successful. India's oil imports from Russia hit record levels in June, and the nation continues to import it from 14 countries, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and US. 

In 1984, the UK was the world's fifth leading oil-producing country. By 1999, the nation's North Sea oil rigs were delivering almost three million barrels of oil a day.

Since then, reserves have declined considerably, and in 2019 the total was 1.118 million a day.

The pandemic prompted further shrinkage in the country’s oil industry and the UK produced 1.029 million barrels a day in 2020. In 2021, its daily oil production fell below one million barrels for the first time since 2015, dipping down to 874,000.

This has resulted in a drop from 18th to 19th place in the global rankings. 

Despite not being a member of OPEC, Oman agreed to reduce its production of oil in 2016. In 2017, its daily rate fell to 971,000 barrels from a peak output of 1.04 million the previous year. 

In 2018, production was up by 7,000 more barrels a day, although this dropped back down to 971,000 barrels a day in 2019.

Like most oil-producing nations, Oman’s future in the industry was made uncertain by the coronavirus pandemic. As the price of oil was sent into turmoil, the nation's production rate slipped to 951,000 barrels per day in 2020.

The country has since managed to increase this number by 20,000 barrels a day, averaging production rates of 971,000 last year. 

In keeping with the other OPEC countries, Angola cut oil production to help end the glut of the commodity and stimulate prices. As such, the number of barrels produced per day in 2019 was almost 20% less than prior to the deal in 2016.

As turbulence hit the industry due to the pandemic, Angola produced a surplus of oil in 2020. Although initially resistant to reducing production to compensate for the overproduction earlier in the year, pressure from OPEC prompted the nation to agree to lower its production rates in the latter half of 2020.

In total, Angola produced 1.324 million barrels each day, a drop of around 200,000 from 2019. In 2021, this number fell again to 1.164 million barrels per day, marking a further decrease of 160,000 barrels. 

It's a similar story in Algeria, which has also limited production due to the OPEC agreement.

The daily total of barrels produced in 2019 was 1.511 million, down from the 1.689 million it had pumped out each day in 2010.

Tumbling oil prices played a large part in the Algerian government’s decision to slash its state budget in half in July 2021, as the oil-dependent nation tried to navigate the difficulties caused by the pandemic.

Algeria's oil production was 1.330 million barrels per day in 2020; this figure increased slightly to 1.353 million barrels per day in 2021. 

Nigeria was exempted from the cuts OPEC imposed on other countries in order to allow it to recover from the disruption caused by the Boko Haram insurgency.

However, the country still agreed to cut its output in September 2019, with its oil production falling from 2.101 million barrels a day to 1.828 million barrels between 2019 and 2020.

After 13 years of deliberation, Nigerian lawmakers passed the Petroleum Industry Bill on 1 July 2021. This was in the hope of ending foreign exploitation of the country’s resources and had the goal of bringing an end to the regulatory uncertainty that has often discouraged investors in the past.

In the same year, its daily production averaged 1.626 million barrels per day.

Former OPEC member Qatar announced it was leaving the organisation in 2018, allowing it to focus on gas rather than oil production.

Despite a spectacular disagreement with its fellow Gulf-based OPEC members in 2016, the nation still stuck to the agreement of cutting oil production until the end of 2018.

This trend continued and, in 2019, Qatar produced 1.727 million barrels of oil a day, a fall from 1.793 million the year before.

Due to the pandemic, Qatar saw production levels dip to 1.714 million barrels per day in 2020. This was followed by a small recovery in 2021, with daily production averaging at 1.746 million barrels per day.

While oil production may be below pre-pandemic levels, Qatar expects the demand for natural gas to peak around 2040, which explains the country’s interest in the burgeoning sector.

Bucking global trends, oil production actually rose in Kazakhstan in 2019 thanks to an upsurge in fracking activities in the country, as well as the completion of several key plant and refinery renovation projects.

The nation even managed to up its oil production in the first quarter of 2020 – although it was unable to avoid the effects of the pandemic entirely.

Oil production in Kazakhstan dropped from 1.919 million barrels a day in 2019 to 1.806 million in 2020, with this number rallying to 1.811 million last year. 

Oil production in Mexico peaked in 2003 at almost four million barrels a day, with output gradually declining ever since.

In 2019, the downward trend saw the country produce 1.921 million barrels per day, marking a drop of almost one million barrels since 2012.

During the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, Pemex, the country’s largest oil producer, announced its lowest extraction rates since 1979, with 1.91 million barrels sourced each day.

This marked the country's lowest figures in over two decades. While levels haven't quite yet bounced back to where they once were, production did increase to 1.928 million barrels per day in 2021. 

Like the UK, Europe's leading oil-extracting nation is dependent on offshore reserves in the North Sea, which have been in gradual decline over the years.

Norway agreed to limit its 2020 oil production to help stabilise the market during the coronavirus pandemic. Despite this, the Scandinavian country actually upped its production to just over two million barrels each day.

By 2024, the country expects to increase oil production by 19% due to the success of new developments in the industry, such as the Johan Sverdrup field.

One of the biggest oil fields in Norway, the Johan Sverdrup field currently accounts for over a quarter of the country's oil output, with production expected to reach 720,000 barrels per day by the end of 2022.

Oil and gas are big business in Kuwait, accounting for more than half of the country’s GDP and more than 90% of its exports.

Despite being one of the more prominent OPEC members, Kuwait’s oil production has crept up in recent years, though it's yet to surpass its 2012 oil production total of more than 3.17 million barrels a day.

May 2020 saw Kuwait commit to cut oil production, with OPEC asking the world’s biggest oil-producing nations to come together in a bid to stabilise oil prices amid the chaos caused by the pandemic.

As a result, Kuwait produced 2.695 million barrels per day in 2020, down from 2.976 million in 2019. Production ramped back up again in 2021, with its daily total increasing to 2.741 million barrels on average.

Unlike many of the other largest oil-producing countries, Brazil did not agree to reduce production in 2016. Its output actually increased from 2.691 million barrels in 2018 to 2.890 million in 2019, with enormous investments made in the industry beginning to pay off.

Not even the severe impact of COVID-19 could quell Brazil’s surging oil production, which increased to a rate of 3.03 million barrels per day in 2020.

Brazil currently holds 1% of the world's total oil reserves, which is set to last the country around 15 years. Despite the impressive figures, however, its production rate dipped below three million barrels per day last year, falling to 2.987 million. 

Back in the 1970s, Iran was considered an oil powerhouse. However, its influence in the industry has decreased as other countries have started to use their own oil reserves.

Iran's oil production and export rates have further fallen since the United States increased sanctions against the country in 2018. The following year, its oil output dropped to 3.399 million barrels a day, a drop from 4.608 million in 2018.

Fluctuating sanctions and the COVID-19 outbreak caused production to fall again, with output dropping to 3.084 million barrels in 2020. 

However, this downward trend hasn't lasted, with Iran producing an average of 3.620 million barrels per day in 2021. In September this year, the National Iranian Oil Company announced that it plans to increase its output to over four million barrels per day by March 2023. 

The United Arab Emirates cut oil production in 2017 in a bid to tackle the global oversupply problem. However, its output has since crept back up again.

Generally speaking, the nation's oil production has remained stable since the late 1980s. At the current rate of production and consumption, the country’s reserves should last for almost 300 years.

The UAE was producing 3.999 million barrels of oil per day in 2019, although this figure dropped to 3.693 million barrels in 2020 as the elective monarchy agreed to reduce output levels from May 2020.

This trend didn't continue into 2021, however, with the total dropping only slightly to 3.668 million barrels per day last year. 

China is one of the world's largest oil producers and the second-biggest consumer of the substance – which is one of the reasons why the oil market became so volatile when COVID-19 broke out in the country.

Until 2015, China was producing more than four million barrels of oil a day. After production fell to 3.802 million barrels in 2018, there was a slight increase to 3.848 million barrels in 2019. Further slight growth saw the country produce 3.901 million barrels a day in 2020, and 3.994 million in 2021.

China’s status as one of the globe's top oil producers may not last for long though. The People's Republic is thought to have around five years’ worth of proven reserves left, given how high production and consumption levels are.

This could explain why the country continues to import oil at an incredible rate; in 2021 alone, it imported almost 81 million metric tonnes of crude oil from Saudi Arabia according to Statista. 

Iraq signed up to the OPEC agreement committing to cutting oil production at the end of 2016 – yet the country's year-on-year output actually increased as its security situation had improved and fewer supply disruptions were reported.

In 2019, its daily production hit 4.779 million barrels. Iraq committed once again to reduce its output to help prevent a glut and the country produced 4.114 million barrels per day in 2020 as a result.

A combination of COVID-19, collapsing oil prices, and plummeting production levels has pushed millions of Iraqis into poverty, according to a World Bank report published in November 2020. And last year, the nation's oil production rate fell even further, with Iraq producing 4.102 million barrels per day. 

The rapid expansion of Canada's oil sands has been driving impressive growth in the industry. In 2018, output was up 8.9% as a number of new projects went live, and the number of barrels produced per day increased by another 2.4% in 2019 to over 5.3 million.

The North American country wasn’t immune to the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak and production decreased to 5.135 million barrels per day in 2020. However, the oil sands were thought to have fully recovered from the pandemic shock by June 2021, according to IHS Markit.

Between 2020 and 2021, its production increased to 5.429 million barrels a day. Canada looks set to have a bounteous long-term future in oil, with production expected to increase by more than 120% by 2050.

It’s believed that the country has enough oil to last more than 180 years if it continues at its current rate of consumption.

Russia joined OPEC at the end of 2016 to curb production in a bid to boost global prices – but has struggled to comply with the agreement.

The nation's output saw a marginal increase from 11.562 million barrels a day in 2018 to 11.679 million barrels in 2019, and it was only the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that prompted the country to reduce its output.

The effects of the coronavirus outbreak were thought to have reduced Russia’s oil production by up to 20% at the start of 2020. Across the year, production was down 8.7% compared to 2019.

It's since crept back up to 10.944 million barrels a day, although figures for 2022 are likely to be rather different. By April this year, the nation's oil production had plummeted by over 10% as a result of its invasion of Ukraine. 

That said, Putin is still making money from the country's oil reserves, despite Western sanctions on Russian energy.

China's year-on-year imports of Russian oil reportedly surged by a whopping 22% in September. The Russian Federation remains China's second-largest supplier of oil after Saudi Arabia. 

Saudi Arabia remains the world's second-largest oil-producing country, despite OPEC cuts and the pandemic leading to a dip in production.

In 2018, more than 12.2 million barrels were produced daily, which fell to 11.8 million in 2019. In April 2020, Saudi Arabia slashed its production rate and volunteered to make additional cuts outside of the OPEC commitments.

As such, daily production rates fell to 11.039 million barrels in 2020. The figure fell further to 10.954 million in 2021, although oil production still makes up more than 40% of the country’s GDP.

The United States has ruled the roost since 2017 when it comes to producing oil. More than half (32) of the country's states contribute to its total output, with more than 40% drilled in Texas.

The US has been particularly industrious when it comes to extracting oil and was the first nation to adopt methods that allow rigs to drill horizontally, which could account for its increasingly high yields.

In 2019, 17.114 million barrels were produced every day, marking a rise of more than 10% from 2018.

Production dropped to 16.458 million barrels in 2020. The following year, American oil production didn't just have the lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic to contend with – there was also the catastrophic impact of the big freeze that had chilled the country.

Texas was hit particularly hard by the bad weather and the USA's total oil production plunged by around four million barrels per day in 2021. 

Despite the turbulence, US oil production recovered to a staggering 16.585 million barrels last year. Its rates are so much higher than any other country that America will likely keep its top spot for some time to come, especially as its now ramped up its output levels to compensate for the West's boycott of Russian energy. 

Now discover why countries that are rich in gas and oil need to change.