In "The Wizard of Oz," Scarecrow asked the critical question just after the Tin Woodsman was discovered by the Yellow Brick Road: Dorothy: "Did you say something?" Tin Woodsman: "Oil can." Dorothy: "He said, 'Oil can.'" Scarecrow: "Oil can what?" We know the answer to the Scarecrow's question: Oil can make or break politicians. Oil can drive the world's economy. Oil can make news time after time. Oil can play into data, too – data that can cover the entire world.
The influential organization of countries that produce oil, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, has its own Web site and numerous tables, which are easily downloadable and already in Microsoft Excel format, that can provide numbers and perspective to stories about oil imports and exports, the transportation of petroleum products and, of course, pricing. OPEC is made up of 11 oil producing and exporting countries: Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
For those countries, oil is the main commodity and key to their economies. The Web site, www.opec.org, offers charts, publications and background on OPEC itself and, under its Publications link, the Annual Statistical Bulletin. See www.opec.org/library/Annual%20Statistical%20Bulletin/ASB2005.htm. From there, you can check the table of contents and download tables on a variety of topics: basic indicators, oil and gas production, export and import, transportation by tanker or pipeline, oil prices, major oil companies and global flows of crude and refined oil.
For example, click on the link for Oil and Gas Data, then choose Table 56: World Imports of Crude Oil by Country, 1980-2005: With a single click on the Excel icon, you can download the table and make additional comparisons or calculations. This table is just one example of the rich amount of year-by-year data available from the OPEC site. A quick comparison by region with a calculation of percentage change can show big increases in oil consumption from 1960 to 2005 in Asia and the Mideast, which helps drive the price of oil.
See the category called Summary Tables and Basic Indicators. If you want to use this material in a serious way, you should read the General Notes section of the Annual Statistical Bulletin. There you can find definitions of terms such as "Consumption of refined products," a list of countries included in each region and explanations of abbreviations (for example, "b/d" means barrels per day). Also, you can compare some of these statistics with other data sources: World Trade Organization – www.wto.int International Trade Administration – www.trade.gov Trade Stats Express – http://tse.export.gov