Canada is now the world’s fifth largest oil producer and Iran has been pushed down to sixth place.
The change came about in the fall of last year as Canadian output rose due to growing production from its tar sands in Alberta and also as a result of Iran’s declining production as its fields age and the government has been unable to bring new fields into production fast enough to keep up with the decline.
Here are the top producers as of January 2012 according to statistics published by the International Energy Agency in Paris in millions of barrels per day.
Russia 10.68
S. Arabia 9.55
United States 8.25
China 4.13
Canada 3.85
Iran 3.45
