When it comes to commodities that play a pivotal role in driving the global economy, the oil market reigns supreme in terms of sheer magnitude. A comprehensive analysis conducted by Visual Capitalist highlights the true scale and significance of this fossil fuel on a global scale.
Today, crude oil serves largely as the primary energy source for transportation and acts as a vital raw material in various industries such as plastics, fertilizers, cosmetics, and medicine.
Consequently, the global physical oil market is far-reaching, yielding significant economic and geopolitical influence, with a handful of countries dominating oil production worldwide.
To determine market sizes, Visual Capitalist utilised the latest prices multiplied by the global production in 2022, based on data from TradingEconomics and the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
The table below provides valuable context by contrasting the market size of crude oil with the combined market size of the ten largest metal markets.
The Scale of the Oil Market
In 2022, the world produced an average of 80.75mn barrels of oil per day, which includes condensates. This translates to an annual crude oil production of approximately 29.5bn barrels, with a market size surpassing US$2T at current prices.
This figure far surpasses the combined magnitude of the ten largest metal markets:
| Commodity | 2022 Annual Production | Market Size |
|---|---|---|
| Crude Oil | 29.5bn barrels | US$2.1 trillion |
| Iron Ore | 2.6bn tonnes | US$283.4 billion |
| Gold | 3,100 tonnes | US$195.9 billion |
| Copper | 22mn tonnes | US$183.3 billion |
| Aluminum | 69mn tonnes | US$152.6 billion |
| Nickel | 3.3mn tonnes | US$68.8 billion |
| Zinc | 13mn tonnes | US$30.9 billion |
| Silver | 26,000 tonnes | US$19.9 billion |
| Molybdenum | 250,000 tonnes | US$12.9 billion |
| Palladium | 210 tonnes | US$9.5 billion |
| Lead | 4.5mn tonnes | US$9.2 billion |
The collective market size of the top 10 metal markets totals $967 billion, which is less than half of the size of the oil market. Remarkably, even if we were to include all the smaller raw metal markets, the oil market would still overshadow them significantly.
This stark contrast underscores the immense scale of global oil consumption each year, highlighting its ubiquitous presence in our everyday lives.
