Energy Policy 128 (2019) 476–486

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Energy Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol

Global overview of crude oil use: From source to sink through inter-regional T
trade
⁎
X.F. Wua, G.Q. Chenb,
a
Economics School, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan 430073, PR China
b
Laboratory for Systems Ecology and Sustainability Science, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This paper conducts a systems input-output analysis to form an overview of crude oil use in the globalized world
Crude oil economy in 2015. The use of crude oil is tracked from the sources of exploitation to the sinks of final use through
Systems input-output analysis the channels of inter-regional trade. This paper finds that the top five oil users, the United States, Mainland
Trade imbalance China, Japan, South Korea and Canada, are together responsible for half of global oil use. The global volume of
World economy
oil embodied in trade is twenty percent larger than that in oil exploitation, and the role of the trade of non-oil
International trade
goods in the global oil balance is comparable to that of the direct oil trade. The United States is the biggest net
importer of oil use, in contrast to Mainland China, which is the biggest net importer of direct oil. In order to
characterize a region's energy security, new indices for its dependence on external sources of oil are devised. The
inter-regional transfer of the environmental burden associated with oil use, leading to the dilemma of “regional
decrease at the expense of global increase”, is shown to be inherent to existing energy strategies.

1. Introduction
Crude oil has remained dominant in the world energy supply over
the past half century (Zhang et al., 2015). In 2017, crude oil constituted
34.21% of the total primary energy supply, which is greater than the
share contributed by any other energy source (BP, 2018). As oil use is
increasingly concentrated in the transport and petrochemicals in-
dustries, where substitution is most challenging, crude oil will likely
continue to play the leading role in satisfying global energy needs for
the next two decades (BP, 2016). However, the future supply of crude
oil may be severely limited: according to BP, the crude oil reserves
extant at the end of 2017 will be able to sustain current global oil
production for only 50 years. Under these circumstances, the interna-
tional contest for crude oil resources is becoming increasingly fierce
(Yang et al., 2015). Crude oil has become a special resource with a
significant influence on national economic, military and political stra-
tegies. In recent years, the rapid growth of tight oil production in the
United States has reshaped the structure of the world oil market (Ji and
Fan, 2016). The extremely volatile behavior of oil prices has been
witnessed in the new global energy environment (Byrne et al., in press).
During the period of 2014–2016, crude oil prices encountered a sharp
decline of more than 70%, but a reversal began soon afterward with
prices climbing back to a 4-year high in September 2018 (IEA, 2018a).
Large oil price swings have significant impacts on the development of
the world economy. Crude oil has therefore gained wide attention
among practitioners and academics (Hammoudeh and Reboredo, 2018;
Ji and Zhang, in press).
Crude oil has long been the most traded commodity in the global
market (IEA, 2014) as a result of the high degree of specialization of
regional economies following the law of comparative advantage
(Antweiler et al., 2001; Hummels et al., 2001). Countries with an in-
sufficient supply of locally exploited crude oil might make use of for-
eign resources directly through oil imports, or indirectly through im-
ports of oil-intensive goods and services produced abroad. By
substituting domestic crude oil extraction with imports of oil and oil-
intensive goods, the environmental burden related to oil exploitation
shifts from the consuming countries to the producing ones (Meng et al.,
2018). While extensive accounting has been performed for oil ex-
ploitation, combustion, processing and trade, this phenomenon of the
shift associated with the inter-regional trade of oil-intensive goods re-
mains to be explored (Steininger et al., 2015). Therefore, to identify
countries’ roles in the international cooperation toward oil conservation
and environmental protection, it is imperative to comprehensively ac-
count for global crude oil use from the initial producers to the final
consumers.
Embodied energy, which was conceptualized during the first oil
crisis in the 1970s, can be employed to monitor the flows of energy use.
Embodied energy describes the overall energy use with due

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: xfwu@zuel.edu.cn (X.F. Wu), gqchen@pku.edu.cn (G.Q. Chen).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2019.01.022
Received 5 June 2018; Received in revised form 10 January 2019; Accepted 10 January 2019
0301-4215/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
X.F. Wu, G.Q. Chen Energy Policy 128 (2019) 476–486

Table 1
Scheme of the crude oil input-output table for the world economy.
Purchase

Sale Intermediate use Final use Total output

Region 1 … Region m Region 1 … Region m

Sector 1 … Sector n Sector 1 … Sector n

Intermediate input Region 1 Sector 1 11

z11 … z111
n
… 1m
z11 … z11nm f111 … f11m x11
⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮
Sector n 11
zn1 … 11
znn … zn11m … 1m
znn fn11 … fn1m x n1
⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮
Region m Sector 1 m1
z11 … z1mn1 … mm
z11 … z1mm
n f1m1 … f1mm x1m
⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮
Sector n znm11 … m1
znn … znmm
1 … mm
znn fnm1 … fnmm x nm
Direct crude oil input d11 … dn1 … d1m … dnm

consideration paid to both direct energy use as the exogenous en-
vironmental input of primary energy and the indirect energy use as-
sociated with various anthropogenic inputs as feedback from the eco-
nomic system (Chen and Chen, 2011). The embodied energy of a
product or service is the total energy used directly and indirectly to
generate and sustain it (Costanza, 1980). Unlike direct energy ac-
counting, which reflects immediate on-site energy use, embodied en-
ergy expands both the spatial and temporal scales of the evaluation to
track the total amount of energy required, and provides a more sys-
tematic perspective of energy issues. So far, embodied energy analysis
has gained wide application in various economic systems at the urban
(Chen and Chen, 2015; Lenzen et al., 2004), national (Liu et al., 2010)
and global (Bruckner et al., 2012; Wiedmann et al., 2013) levels, thus
contributing significantly to the deepening of people's understanding of
direct and indirect energy use.
In the aforementioned works, however, energy resources, such as
crude oil, coal, and natural gas, are always counted together (Chen and
Chen, 2010; Gasim, 2015). Embodiment studies that consider crude oil
as a separate research object are few and in great need, especially
considering the crucial role that crude oil plays and the new challenges
in the currently fluctuant oil world. Considering the above, the present
paper aims to provide a systems analysis of embodied crude oil for the
world economy with the most recently available data. Its main con-
tribution to the existing literature is twofold. First, to the best of our
knowledge, this study is the first to adopt the embodiment concept in
order to simulate global crude oil use. Although several analyses on the
oil embodied in China's trade have been performed by Tang et al.
(2012), no special efforts have been made to study embodied oil in the
context of the world economy. Because crude oil lies at the heart of the
world's current energy problems, a detailed embodiment analysis of
global crude oil use is of great importance for energy conservation and
management. Second, the sources and sinks of natural resources flows
are identified in this embodiment accounting, in order to track all oil
use through inter-regional trade chains. Most embodiment studies focus
on the technical consumption of primary or secondary energies in the
production process: primary energy resources, such as crude oil, are
burned to provide heat, and secondary energy resources, such as pet-
roleum, are consumed to propel engines (Chen and Chen, 2011). While
crude oil resources are natural resources originally belonging to the
environmental system outside the economic system (Odum, 1996),
once exploited from the environmental system, they are turned into
production elements for the economic system, and the utility of crude
oil is embodied in various products and services in the economy. In this
perspective, the world economy is reflected as a network of embodied
crude oil flows from the sources of exploitation to the sinks of final use.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 articulates
the methodology employed in this study; Section 3 demonstrates the
main results of crude oil embodied in regional final consumption and
inter-regional trade; major findings are discussed in Section 4, and in
the final section conclusions are drawn.
2. Method and data sources
2.1. Systems MRIOA model
In this work, the multi-regional input-output analysis (MRIOA)
method is adopted to model global crude oil flows (Davis and Caldeira,
2010; Hertwich and Peters, 2009; Huysman et al., 2014; Miller and
Blair, 2009; Weinzettel et al., 2013). Recently, Chen and his research
group developed a systems MRIOA method that is broadly applied in
embodiment accounting (Chen et al., 2013; Chen and Han, 2015; Chen
and Wu, 2017; Chen and Chen, 2013; Wu and Chen, 2017). By paying
equal attention to intermediate use and final use as the two basic
components of total output, the systems MRIOA model can help con-
struct a comprehensive picture of how resources or emissions flow
among economic sectors and regions.
As displayed in Table 1, the world economy is divided into m re-
gions, each with n sectors; z ijrs is the monetary value of goods or services
sold by Sector i in Region r to Sector j in Region s as intermediate input,
and firs is the monetary value of goods or services from Sector i, Region
r to Region s for final use. x ir refers to the monetary value of the total
output of Sector i in Region r. As discussed above, crude oil resources
enter the economic system at the point of exploitation; thus, dir that
represents direct crude oil inputs from the environmental system to the
economic system, is defined specifically as the amount of crude oil
exploited by Sector i in Region r from local natural environment.
The input-output balance equation for embodied crude oil in Sector
i of Region r can be formulated as
m n
dir + ∑ ∑ (ε js z jisr ) = εir xir
s=1 j=1 (1)
where εir
denotes the embodied crude oil intensity of goods or service
from Sector i, Region r, and implies the average amount of direct plus
indirect crude oil use to produce one unit of goods or service in this
sector. As sectoral crude oil exploitation dir , intermediate inputs z jisr and
total outputs x ir can be obtained from energy statistics and economic
input-output tables, the sectoral embodied energy intensity is calcu-
lated by this balance equation (see Equation (S3) in the Supplemental
Data section).
Therefore, the crude oil embodied in Region r's final use, denoted as
EF r , can be calculated as
m n
EF r = ∑ ∑ (ε js f jsr )
s=1 j=1 (2)

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n
In contrast to DE r (= ∑i = 1 dir ), which is defined as domestic ex- environmental system to sustain the consumption activities of house-
ploitation in Region r to enunciate the direct requirements of crude oil holds and local governments and the investment activities of en-
in Region r as a source within oil supply chains, EF r represents the total terprises in the United States. Mainland China is the second largest user,
oil requirements in Region r as a sink. followed by Japan, South Korea and Canada. Together, the top five
As a basic indicator reflecting the region's trading pattern, crude oil users are responsible for 50.44% of global oil use, but they contribute
embodied in trade balance (TB) is determined according to the crude oil only 23.24% to global oil production. Japan relies heavily on foreign
flows embodied in imports (IM) and exports (EX), which can be ex- resources, as demonstrated by the fact that the amount of crude oil it
pressed as exploits is less than 1% of that embodied in its final use. The massive
m n n energy requirements of Japan's developed economy and the country's
IM r = ∑ ∑ ( ∑ (ε js z jisr ) + ε js f jsr ) insufficient domestic resources motivate this phenomenon. In contrast,
s = 1(s ≠ r ) j = 1 i=1 (3) Saudi Arabia is responsible for 13.10% of global oil production, but
n m n only 0.66% of global oil use. Crude oil resources extracted in Saudi
EX r = ∑ ∑ ( ∑ (εir z ijrs ) + εir firs ) Arabia are mostly exported to foreign regions for production or con-
i = 1 s = 1(s ≠ r ) j=1 (4) sumption.
The huge difference between the two indices of DE and EF reveals
TBr = IM r − EX r (5)
that the utility of crude oil resources is greatly redistributed by inter-
regional trade. A region with an insufficient supply of local crude oil
2.2. Data sources resources may hold a considerable amount of the energy welfare of
crude oil usage from other regions. All inter-regional trades are taken
In this study, the global economic input-output matrices are ob- into account in the EF index, providing us with global insight into the
tained from the Eora MRIOA database (latest version 199.82), in which conservation mechanism of crude oil resources. Generally, if con-
the world economy is simulated as a 188-region, 26-sector coupled servation is designed regionally, it allows a region to reduce local oil
system (Lenzen et al., 2012, 2013). The matrices in the year 2015 is use to meet regional conservation goals by increasing imports from
chosen for the analysis, as the most recently available. The statistics for other regions. However, the total amount of world oil use may remain
crude oil exploitation are collected from the International Energy constant or even increase. For example, Japan imports 207.90 billion
Agency (IEA) World Energy Statistics and Balances (IEA, 2018b) and BP USD worth of goods from Mainland China, of which 19.17% are me-
Statistical Review of World Energy (BP, 2018). Details and limitations chanical and electrical products. Because of its superiority in produc-
of the method, as well as data processing, are presented in the tion technology, the electrical and machinery industry in Japan has an
Supplemental Data section. embodied crude oil intensity of 0.06 t/1000USD, which is 14.29%
lower than that in Mainland China. As a result, 2.58 Mt of crude oil use
3. Results in Japan is avoided by importing mechanical and electrical products
from Mainland China, but 2.75 Mt of crude oil resources are consumed
3.1. Crude oil embodied in final use in Mainland China to produce these exports. That is, the situation of
“regional decrease, global increase” may occur if the resource-saving
Among regions, domestic crude oil exploitation and use, re- strategies are devised at the regional level rather than at the global
presented by the two indices of DE and EF, respectively, vary greatly, level. In this regard, EF can be seen as a promising criterion to sup-
and a comparison is provided in Fig. 1. The United States is by far the plement the traditional ones that focus on on-site direct oil use and to
largest user, and 1102.88 Mt of crude oil is globally exploited from the help equitably allocate regional responsibilities for oil saving.

United States
Saudi Arabia
Russia
Canada
China, mainland
UAE
Iraq
Iran
Venezuela
Kuwait
Brazil
Mexico
Nigeria
Norway
Angola
Domestic crude oil exploitation (DE) 0 300 600

United States
China, mainland
Japan
South Korea
Canada
Brazil
Spain
France
Germany
Italy
United Kingdom
Mexico
Turkey
India
Iran
Embodied oil in final use (EF) 0 600 1200

Unit: Mt

0 20 50 100 200 500 10000

Fig. 1. Comparison between domestic crude oil exploitation (DE) and embodied oil in the final use (EF) for the countries and regions.

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X.F. Wu, G.Q. Chen Energy Policy 128 (2019) 476–486

30 9
Agriculture Heavy manufacturing
Light manufacturing Construction
Service Others
Embodied oil use (E+02 Mt)

Embodied oil use (E+02 Mt)

20 6

10 3

0 0
Household Non-profit Government Fixed capital Inventory Acquisitions Household Non-profit Government Fixed capital Inventory Acquisitions
use institution use use formation increase of valuables use institution use use formation increase of valuables

(a) World (b) United States

3 3
Embodied oil use (E+02 Mt)

Embodied oil use (E+02 Mt)

2 2

1 1

0 0
Household Non-profit Government Fixed capital Inventory Acquisitions Household Non-profit Government Fixed capital Inventory Acquisitions
use institution use use formation increase of valuables use institution use use formation increase of valuables

(c) China, mainland (d) Japan

Fig. 2. The composition of final demand for (a) world; (b) United States; (c) China, mainland; (d) Japan.

Based on the classification of economic statistics, six final use ca-
tegories, including household use, non-profit institution use, govern-
ment use, fixed capital formation, inventory increase and acquisitions
of valuables, are considered (see Fig. 2). Globally, the total crude oil
embodied in final use is equal to the total oil resources exploited,
4407.95 Mt. Households are the largest final user, with a share of
54.40% of total final use. Regarding household use, sectoral contribu-
tions are also displayed in the plot. For clarity, the 26 sectors are ag-
gregated, and detailed information can be found in the Supplemental
data section. Heavy manufacturing provides the largest portion of
48.38%, followed by service industry with a share of 31.01%, which is
always regarded as low-energy and low-carbon industry in direct en-
ergy accounting. Among the service related sectors, embodied oil use in
education spending ranks the top, reflecting the great importance that
people now attach to education and culture.
The structures of the final use of embodied crude oil in the three
biggest oil users (i.e., the United States, Mainland China and Japan) are
also explored. Household use records the oil consumption at the
household level, which directly reflects the standard of living of do-
mestic residents (Joyeux and Ripple, 2007). With the exception of
Mainland China, household use in these regions takes a dominant share
of their total crude oil use. For the United States, 65.59% of its final use
is attributed to household use, while the ratio is 59.63% for Japan. In
contrast, crude oil embodied in fixed capital formation in Mainland
China constitutes 54.24% of its total final use, 1.76 times that of
household use. As the largest developing country, China has used
substantial resources in its domestic infrastructure construction to
support the rapid development of the local economy. Consequently, the
construction industry has become the leading contributor to the final
use in Mainland China. Although the total amount of embodied crude
oil used by Mainland China is close to half of that used by the United
States, household use in Mainland China is merely one-fifth of that in
the United States. Furthermore, compared with Japan, Mainland China
has a greater final use but a smaller household use. Although China has
experienced rapid economic growth since the introduction of the re-
form and opening-up policy, a large gap in living conditions still exists
between China and high-income countries, as indicated by household
energy use.
Based on the World Bank's population data (WB, 2018), the per
capita oil use embodied in total final use and household use are cal-
culated for the 188 countries and regions, and the detailed results are
presented in the Supplemental data section. The per capita oil use varies
greatly among regions, indicating an extremely unbalanced distribution
of oil use worldwide. Fig. 3 compares some major regions regarding the
per capita crude oil use embodied in their total final use and household
use. For the two per capita indicators, the maximum value appears in
Luxembourg, while the minimum is found in Somalia. Regarding the
total final use, the per capita embodied crude oil use in high-income
countries and regions reaches 2.52 t/cap, which is 5.20, 31.66 and
156.91 times those in the upper middle-income (0.48 t/cap), lower
middle-income (0.08 t/cap) and low-income countries and regions
(0.02 t/cap), respectively. The world average household oil use is cal-
culated as 0.32 t per capita, 54.40% of the world average total final use
of embodied crude oil per capita. For Mainland China, the ratio of
household oil use to total final oil use is only 30.75%, 56.52% of the
global average level. The per capita crude oil embodied in household
use in Mainland China is 0.11 t/cap, 65.36% lower than the global
average, and only 4.98% of that in the United States (2.26 t/cap). Of the
five largest embodied crude oil users, Mainland China is the only one
with per capita household oil use lower than the global average.

479
X.F. Wu, G.Q. Chen
8
Per-capita embodied oil use
6
(t/cap)
Fig. 3. Per-capita embodied oil use for major countries and regions.
3.2. Crude oil embodied in inter-regional trade
As a consequence of the geographical separation of exploiters and
users, crude oil is largely traded among regions. The global trade vo-
lume of embodied crude oil (the sum of crude oil embodied in the 188
regions’ imports) is 5171.01 Mt, 1.17 times the total global crude oil
exploitation. The top 15 regions, ranked by IM (crude oil embodied in
imports) and EX (crude oil embodied in exports), are shown in Fig. 4(a)
and (b), respectively. The largest importer is the United States, and
859.17 Mt of its crude oil is imported directly and indirectly from for-
eign regions, 1.48 times of the amount exploited locally. Mainland
China is the second largest importer, followed by Japan, Germany and
South Korea, in contrast to the order of exporters. Saudi Arabia and
Russia are the leading exporters, with 569.87 Mt and 539.82 Mt of
embodied crude oil exported to foreign regions, respectively, followed
by the United States, Germany and Canada.
For these major importers and exporters, the sectoral contributions
to their imports and exports are displayed in the figure to help under-
stand the trade structure in these regions. For the United States, 66.57%
of its total imports are from the mining and quarrying sector in other
regions. Because the mining industry plays a key role in the resource
supply for the economic system, it becomes a major trader in the in-
ternational crude oil market. Additionally, 338.29 Mt of embodied
crude oil is exported by the United States, of which 46.37% is con-
centrated in the petroleum sector, chemical and non-metallic mineral
products. As one of the biggest producers of chemical products, the
United States exports many goods from the chemical processing in-
dustry, which is also an intensive oil-consuming industry. Saudi Arabia
and Russia have a similar export structure: their exports are con-
centrated mainly in the mining and quarrying sector (98.39% for Saudi
Arabia and 99.28% for Russia), which indicates the fact that these ex-
porting economies lack structural diversity, and crude oil resources
extracted locally are the main export commodities. For Japan, an oil-
poor country, more than half of its oil exports are embodied in non-oil
products from the other sectors.
In terms of net trade (see Fig. 4(c) and (d)), the embodied crude oil
reaches 2509.57 Mt, nearly half of the global crude oil exploited. Re-
gion-wise, the embodied crude oil in the inter-regional trade balance
(TB) is presented in the Supplemental data section. Regions with po-
sitive (negative) TB have a surplus (deficit) of embodied crude oil in
inter-regional trade. Among the 188 countries and regions, 144
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Energy Policy 128 (2019) 476–486
Total final use
Household use
countries and regions have an embodied crude oil surplus, while the
other 44 have a deficit. The United States is the world's leading surplus
country, with a trade surplus of 520.88 Mt of embodied crude oil, fol-
lowed by Japan, Mainland China, South Korea and Spain, which are
also major users of embodied crude oil as discussed above, which re-
veals the great influence of inter-regional trade on regional consump-
tion. In contrast, the five largest net exporters are Saudi Arabia, Russia,
Iraq, UAE and Venezuela, which are oil-abundant countries.
Fig. 5(a) presents major inter-regional trade flows of embodied
crude oil. The whole world is divided into 20 regions in this figure (i.e.,
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN, 10 member states),
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC, 12 member
states), the European Union (EU, 28 member states), the 16 largest
exporting regions of embodied crude oil among the other 138 regions,
and the region that integrates the rest of the world). The 20 regions are
arranged in a circle, and the arc length represents the corresponding
region's gross export volume of embodied crude oil. Because every pair
of regions has trade connections in the global market, the chord in the
figure describes the trade volume between the two connected regions.
The different thicknesses at the two ends of the chord represent the two
connected economies’ export volumes relative to one another. OPEC is a
major stakeholder and strongest player in the international crude oil
market. Its export volume of embodied crude oil nearly equals the sum
of that of the other 19 regions, amounting to 1658.91 Mt. The largest
export flow from OPEC goes to the EU, and the second largest goes to
the United States, together accounting for 56.63% of OPEC's total ex-
ports. Russia is also a main oil producer, with an export volume of
539.82 Mt of embodied crude oil, and 74.16% of its exports flow into
the EU, the biggest importer among the 20 regions.
Next, the net trade relationships between the 20 regions are por-
trayed in Fig. 5(b). In this figure, the chord portrays the net trade vo-
lume of embodied crude oil between the two connected regions in a
color that corresponds to the net exporter of the two. The EU occupies a
bigger part of the circle than it does in Fig. 5(a), which is attributed to
its extremely imbalanced status in the crude oil trade with other re-
gions. As the largest economic entity in the world, the EU imports a
total of 1312.45 Mt of embodied crude oil, three times that embodied in
its exports. Notably, in the bilateral trade between the EU and Russia,
the imported crude oil is 17.64 times more than the exported crude oil.
The EU acts as a typical receiver of embodied crude oil in the inter-
national market.
X.F. Wu, G.Q. Chen Energy Policy 128 (2019) 476–486

Embodied oil use in trade (E+02 Mt) Embodied oil use in trade (E+02 Mt)
0 3 6 9 6 4 2 0

United States Saudi Arabia

China, mainland Russia
Japan United States
Germany Germany
South Korea Canada
France UAE
Spain Netherlands
Italy South Korea
Netherlands Iraq
United Kingdom China, mainland
Canada France
Turkey Venezuela
Belgium Mining and quarrying Iran
Brazil Petroleum, chemical and non-metallic mineral products Japan
The others
Thailand Spain

(a) Import (b) Export

India Oman
Netherlands Kazakhstan
Slovakia Norway
China, Hong Kong Algeria
Greece Canada
United Kingdom Qatar
Turkey Angola
Italy Nigeria
Germany Kuwait
France Iran
Spain Venezuela
South Korea UAE
China, mainland Iraq
Japan Russia
United States Saudi Arabia

0 2 4 6 6 4 2 0
Embodied oil use in trade (E+02 Mt) Embodied oil use in trade (E+02 Mt)

(c) Net import ( d ) Ne t ex por t

Fig. 4. The leading traders of embodied crude oil regarding (a) import; (b) export; (c) net import; (d) net export.

3.3. Source-to-sink oil budget
In general, the crude oil resources exploited in Region A can be
exported to Region B as intermediate inputs to produce goods that are
exported to Region C for final use. Therefore, Region A's crude oil is
finally used in Region C, regardless of how that crude oil is traded,
directly or indirectly (as embodied in the trade of non-oil goods), in the
global market. Region A is the source of oil use flows, while Region C is
the destination for the final use of Region A's oil. To explore the rela-
tions between the source (Region A) and the sink (Region C) in global
oil supply chains, all crude oil use flows are tracked from exploitation to
final use to compile a source-to-sink budget.
As a source, a region extracts crude oil resources from the local
environment and provides these resources for its own or foreign re-
gions’ final use. The self-sufficiency rate of a source can therefore be
defined as the ratio of crude oil exploited locally for its own final use
over the total crude oil exploited locally, and the rates for major regions
are displayed in Table 2. Sudan has the highest self-sufficiency rate by
source of the 188 source regions because of its backward economy and
weak trade connection with foreign regions; 98.97% of crude oil
exploited in Sudan is used to meet local final demand, and only 1.03%
is used to meet foreign regions’ final demand. For Saudi Arabia and
Russia, as the two largest oil sources, their self-sufficiency rates are
2.41% and 3.01%, respectively, indicating that the vast majority of
crude oil resources extracted in the two regions are inserted into the
global market to sustain foreign regions’ development. However, the oil
resources of the United States are used mostly to satisfy its own final
requirements, resulting in a self-sufficiency rate of 72.64%. Mainland
China also has a high rate of 76.18%.
For a region that is a sink in the oil supply chain, its final use is
sustained by the crude oil exploited either locally or in foreign areas.
The share of local exploitation out of total use is termed the self-suffi-
ciency rate by sink. The United States is the largest oil sink of the 188
regions, and its self-sufficiency rate is 38.33%; therefore, 61.67% of its
oil use is dependent on resources from foreign regions.
A source-to-sink oil budget for the global supply chain is presented
in Fig. 6. The major oil exploiters are presented in the source list in the
figure, while the major embodied oil users are listed as sink regions.
OPEC is the leading source region of the investigated regions and
produces 40.93% of the world's total oil exploitation; 1804.26 Mt of
crude oil resources are extracted in OPEC, of which 23.31% are con-
sumed for the United States’ final use, 22.55% for EU, 10.46% for

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(a) General trade (b) Net trade

Fig. 5. Embodied crude oil connections between the 20 major economies by (a) general trade; (b) net trade (ASEAN stands for the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations; OPEC is short for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries; 28 member states of the European Union are aggregated into one economy indicated as
the EU. (a) The general trade relations between every two economies are portrayed by the chords. The different thicknesses at the two ends of the chord represent the
two connected economies’ export volumes of embodied crude oil to one another. The chord's color corresponds to the larger exporter of the two. (b) The net trade
relations between every two economies are portrayed by the chords. The thicknesses at both ends of the chord are the same, and represent the net trade volume of
embodied crude oil between the two connected economies. The chord's color corresponds to the net exporter.).

Mainland China, 10.37% for Japan, 10.20% for OPEC itself and 23.12%
for other foreign regions. In contrast, the United States is the largest
sink region of the investigated regions; 1102.88 Mt of crude oil re-
sources are embodied in the United States’ final use, of which 38.33%
are extracted in the local environment, and 38.14% are extracted in
OPEC.
The largest flow between two different regions is from OPEC to the
United States. As indicated in the discussion in Fig. 5(a) above, OPEC
exports the most embodied crude oil to EU in the inter-regional trade.
However, in Fig. 6, when the crude oil resources exploited in OPEC are
tracked in the complex trading network to the destinations in which
they are finally used, to explore the consumption distribution of OPEC’
crude oil resources, the United States is the largest final user of OPEC's
crude oil.
4. Discussion
4.1. Direct and embodied oil trade
Direct oil trade holds an important position in the international
market. In 2015, the total world merchandise trade reached 16 trillion
USD, of which 9% was contributed by the direct trade of crude oil and
oil products (UN , 2016). In contrast, indirect oil trade refers to oil use
hidden in the non-oil commodity trade, which accounts for the re-
maining 91% of global merchandise trade. Both the direct and indirect
oil trades describe the flow of oil resources between countries. In direct
oil trade, the physical flow of oil resources is recorded, while indirect
oil trade is the virtual flow of the utilization of oil resources. As the
basic energy and chemical material, oil has been largely consumed
during the commodity production processes, making indirect oil trade
comparable to direct oil trade. In this study, both direct and indirect oil
trade are considered as embodied oil trade, and the total trade volume
is calculated as 5171.01 Mt, 1.45 times the world direct oil trade vo-
lume reported by the IEA (see Table 3). For a comparison of the direct
and embodied oil trade, the trade imbalance of the investigated coun-
tries and regions in both trades is depicted in Fig. 7. The net import
volume of crude oil and oil products is used to indicate the region's
direct trade imbalance, and the related data are collected from IEA
(2018b). The embodied oil trade imbalance, which describes the extent
to which the crude oil resources embodied in a region's imports exceed

Table 2
Self-sufficiency rate of major regions by source and sink.
Region Self-sufficiency rate by source Self-sufficiency rate by sink Region Self-sufficiency rate by source Self-sufficiency rate by sink

Brazil 68.76% 60.67% Mexico 48.50% 64.13%

Canada 39.39% 57.36% Russia 3.01% 38.83%
China, mainland 76.18% 32.66% Saudi Arabia 2.41% 47.75%
France 33.14% 0.25% South Korea 27.86% 0.12%
Germany 32.01% 0.81% Spain 42.57% 0.06%
India 57.81% 35.15% Sudan 98.97% 99.74%
Indonesia 47.39% 41.39% Turkey 54.59% 1.83%
Iran 22.81% 74.66% UAE 4.92% 41.23%
Italy 43.32% 2.16% United Kingdom 42.20% 18.31%
Japan 73.86% 0.12% United States 72.64% 38.33%
Kuwait 28.78% 92.86% Venezuela 10.71% 70.49%

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X.F. Wu, G.Q. Chen Energy Policy 128 (2019) 476–486

Brazil Brazil
Canada Canada
China, mainland
Colombia China, mainland
Kazakhstan
Mexico India
Norway Japan
Oman Mexico
Russia South Korea
Russia
Turkey

United States
United States
ASEAN

ASEAN
OPEC OPEC

EU

EU
Rest of world Rest of world
Source Sink

Fig. 6. Source-to-sink budget for global oil resources (ASEAN stands for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; OPEC is short for the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries; 28 member states of the European Union are aggregated into one economy indicated as the EU. The thickness of the flow represents the volume
of crude oil resources that are exploited in the source region to meet the final demands of the sink region, and its color corresponds to the source region.).

Table 3 those embodied in its exports, is calculated in this research.

A comparison between direct and embodied oil trade. As shown in the figure, these countries and regions are located
Direct oil trade Embodied oil trade mainly in the first and third quadrants, indicating the consistency of the
two kinds of trade imbalance in sign (positive or negative), except the
World total trade volume (Mt) 3566.21 5171.01 seven countries of Argentina, Belarus, Egypt, Mongolia, Myanmar,
The largest importer United States United States
Turkmenistan and Vietnam in the second quadrant, and the two
The largest exporter Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia
The largest net importer Mainland China United States
countries of Brazil and Malaysia in the fourth quadrant. As a resource-
The largest net exporter Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia based country, Brazil owns rich oil reserves in its southeast coastal
Role of Brazil Net exporter Net importer areas and is a net exporter in the direct oil trade (Lin et al., 2017).
Role of Argentina Net importer Net exporter However, from the embodiment perspective of the present study, in
addition to crude oil itself, all traded non-oil goods also carry crude oil
use and should be accounted for accordingly. Because of the backward

Fig. 7. Imbalance in the direct oil trade and embodied oil trade (The size of the sphere represents the corresponding economy's gross trade volume of embodied crude
oil.).

483
X.F. Wu, G.Q. Chen
manufacturing industry in Brazil, huge imports of manufactured goods
are witnessed in the country. In 2015, a quarter of its total imports are
electrical and mechanical products, which are oil-intensive. More em-
bodied crude oil is therefore found in Brazil's imports than in its ex-
ports, making Brazil a net importer in the embodied oil trade. The
countries in the second quadrant show a different trade pattern. They
are net oil importers in the direct trade but net exporters in the em-
bodied trade, which indicates that non-oil exports contain more em-
bodied oil than non-oil imports. The countries and regions in the first
and third quadrant can be divided into two parts by the 45-degree line.
One part includes the regions that fall into the shadow area between the
line and the X axis. For those regions, the imbalance caused by the
embodied oil trade is larger than that caused by the direct oil trade. The
other part includes the regions outside the shadow area between the
line and the Y axis, and these regions are in a more imbalanced situa-
tion in the direct oil trade than in the embodied oil trade.
Mainland China is the area with the highest value of direct net oil
imports, in contrast to the United States as the biggest net importer of
embodied oil. As the main consuming nation, the United States imports
much crude oil in inter-regional net trade, directly and indirectly. In
terms of magnitude, the crude oil embodied in its non-oil trade is
71.31% of the direct trade volume of crude oil. In contrast, the trade
imbalance of Mainland China is overestimated in the direct oil trade.
Mainland China is regarded as a “world factory”; it consumes many oil
resources to meet the local manufacturing demand and serves the in-
ternational market with more exports than imports. As a consequence,
the indirect crude oil use hidden in its exports is 1.21 times larger than
that in its imports, which offsets the imbalance in direct oil trade. India
also shows a similar behavior. As the world's fastest-growing major
economy, India is predicted to replace China as the factory of the world.
The vast merchandise exports from India imply large embodied oil
exports and, as a result, the degree of imbalance in the embodied oil
trade is much less than that in the direct oil trade. Traditional analyses
of the international oil trade are confined to only the trade of crude oil
itself and fail to consider the indirect trade related to non-oil goods. The
present embodiment research is expected to supplement the direct trade
theory and to help understand the crude oil trade imbalance.
4.2. Distinctive trading economies
According to World Trade Organization (WTO) statistics, the United
States and China contributed 11.68% and 11.06% of the world's total
trade in 2015, respectively, and are the two largest economies in terms
of international trade (WTO , 2016). With respect to the crude oil
embodied in their trade, the two countries still hold the first two places.
The trade connections between the two nations and their major trade
partners in terms of embodied crude oil are presented in Fig. 8. For the
United States, nearby countries are the main source of its imports.
Canada, Mexico and Venezuela together make up two-fifths of total
imports. Another significant source of imports to the United States is
Saudi Arabia, amounting to 14.14% of the United States’ total imports.
Meanwhile, Canada is the United States’ largest export market; 79.80
Mt of embodied crude oil is exported from the United States to Canada,
making up 23.59% of the total exports of the United States. South Korea
is regarded as an oil-poor country, but it plays the role of net exporter in
bilateral trade with the United States regarding embodied oil, because
of the huge exports of non-oil goods from South Korea.
BP (2018) noted that China has replaced the United States as the
world's largest net oil importer since 2013. The huge Chinese demand
for crude oil resources has long been blamed as the main reason for
high oil prices (WTO , 2015). However, what is always overlooked is
that massive embodied crude oil resources are exported by China, along
with the exports of commodities ‘made in China’. As shown in the
figure, Mainland China exports 150.71 Mt of embodied crude oil, ac-
counting for 70.10% of its total exploitation. The EU and the United
States are the two biggest markets to receive these exports. Moreover,
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Energy Policy 128 (2019) 476–486
Mainland China's net import volume of embodied crude oil is 286.54
Mt, far less than that of the United States (520.88 Mt) and even no-
ticeably less than that of Japan (305.43 Mt). The embodiment analysis
of the crude oil trade contributes to recent efforts to better understand
the roles and responsibilities of each economy in the global oil market.
4.3. Crude oil security
Currently, energy security is a key topic of political discussions and
debates around the world. In 2007, the United States passed the Energy
Independence and Security Act, aiming to reduce its dependence on en-
ergy imports and strengthen its supply security. In recent years, the
shale revolution in the United States has produced a significant increase
in its domestic oil production. According to U.S. Energy Information
Administration (EIA) figures, the country's degree of external oil de-
pendence, which is defined as the ratio of net oil imports over total oil
consumption, peaked at 66.63% in 2005 and subsequently began to
decline, reaching 31.72% in 2015 and 26.80% in 2017 (EIA, 2018).
However, Table 2 above shows that the United States’ self-sufficiency
rate by sink is 38.33%; therefore, 61.67% of crude oil embodied in its
final use is dependent on foreign crude oil resources, 94.45% greater
than the value of the conventional external dependence degree. This
difference can be attributed mainly to the following two factors. First,
the conventional indicator of the external dependence degree quantifies
a region's dependence on foreign oil from an intuitive perspective for
the oil supply, while the new indicator of the self-sufficiency rate sug-
gests a physical view of oil use. In calculating the conventional external
dependence degree, all oil resources exploited in the United States are
assumed to be used by the country itself, while only oil resources that
are exploited and finally used in the United States are taken as a local
contribution to final use in the self-sufficiency rate. Second, the United
States imports many non-oil commodities from the international
market, and these commodities produced in foreign regions require
massive foreign oil inputs during their production. This indirect foreign
oil dependence is covered by the self-sufficiency rate but excluded from
the conventional external dependence degree. In economic globaliza-
tion, it is impossible to isolate regional energy use from foreign energy
resources. This new index of the self-sufficiency rate provides a com-
prehensive method for evaluating the contribution of foreign oil to local
consumption and provides fundamental insight on the energy security
issue.
5. Conclusion and policy implications
The global competition for crude oil is becoming more intense as the
world economy grows rapidly. Because of the geographic separation
between production and consumption, crude oil use is not confined to
its direct use in terms of the consumption of oil products; it also in-
volves indirect use related to the consumption of other commodities or
services that require oil inputs in the production process. However,
relevant studies mainly emphasize direct use. In the present paper,
global crude oil use is analyzed for the first time, by taking account of
both direct and indirect crude oil use as embodied crude oil. A systems
multi-regional input-output simulation is applied to comprehensively
demonstrate the oil flows from the source of exploitation to the sink of
final use through inter-regional trade.
The United States is found to be the largest final user of crude oil,
and over three-fifths of crude oil embodied in its final use is exploited in
foreign regions. In contrast, for OPEC, the largest oil exploiter, merely
one-tenth of crude oil exploited by the organization is ultimately used
by itself. The results reveal the redistribution of the utility of oil re-
sources among regions, which is due to the frequent inter-regional trade
within the context of globalization. For the world, the total volume of
crude oil embodied in trade is 20% greater than that of the total ex-
ploitation. In this regard, it is possible for a region to reduce local oil
use to meet the regional conservation goal by increasing its imports
X.F. Wu, G.Q. Chen
Fig. 8. Embodied crude oil connections between China and United States and their major trade partners (28 countries in the European Union (EU) are aggregated
into one region; ASEAN stands for Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Number in the box indicates the trade volume from the exporting region to the importing
one in unit of Mt.).
from foreign regions. The total amount of world oil use, however, may
increase because of the transfer of production responsibility and en-
vironmental burdens to foreign regions. This phenomenon of “regional
decrease at the expense of global increase” is witnessed in the trade of
mechanical and electrical products between Japan and Mainland China.
Therefore, regional oil regulation in isolation cannot help oil con-
servation and environmental protection, and all regions in the world
should be taken together as a whole for sustainable oil policy making.
The crude oil embodied in the total final use of Mainland China is
close to half of that of the United States. However, regarding household
oil use as a reflection of the domestic residents’ standard of living,
Mainland China is merely one-fifth of the level in the United States and,
in per capita terms, it is only one-twentieth of that of the United States.
Currently, the increase in domestic consumption is a priority of the
Chinese government. The big gap in the household oil use between
China and high-income countries suggests that the demand for resident
consumption should be a top priority.
Approximately half of the global crude oil exploited is in magnitude
embodied in net trade, which contributes greatly to the global trade
imbalance. The United States is recognized as the leading net importer
with the largest trade surplus regarding oil utilization. The oil trade
imbalance in the United States is exacerbated by the crude oil embodied
in the non-oil trade, which is comparable in magnitude to its direct oil
trade. By contrast, for Mainland China and India as major emerging
economies, the large non-oil commodity exports, in terms of indirect oil
exports, greatly offset their extreme imbalance in the direct oil trade.
India is reported to repeat the development history of China. As China is
now suffering from serious environmental degradation, Indian gov-
ernments should draw a lesson from it and pay particular attention to
the pollution transfer phenomenon associated with the indirect energy
trade. More commodities ‘made in India’ are appearing in international
market, which implies a massive indirect oil outflow hidden in them. As
a result, indirect exports related to oil-intensive commodity exports
should be controlled in the adjustment of the trade structure of the
country.
Two new indicators of the self-sufficiency rate are developed to
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Energy Policy 128 (2019) 476–486
explore the relationships between crude oil exploiters and crude oil
users in global supply chains and to quantify the physical foreign
contribution to local consumption. Three-fifths of the crude oil embo-
died in the United States’ final use relies on oil resources exploited in
foreign regions, which in magnitude is nearly twice the conventional
external dependence degree of crude oil reported by the EIA. The boom
of shale oil production in the United States has greatly relieved the
country's dependence on oil imports. However, increasing trade has
created more connections between nations in the globalized world. The
oil use embodied in the vast imports of the United States indicates the
country's indirect dependence on the foreign oil resources, which is not
considered in the conventional indicator. This embodiment analysis is
expected to supplement the existing works on direct energy accounting
and to help illuminate the energy security issue.
Acknowledgements
This research is supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China [Grant no. 71804194 and 51579004], the National
Social Science Foundation of China [Grant no. 18ZDA038] and the
Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China [Grant no.
18YJC790121].
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in the
online version at doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2019.01.022.
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