Information depicted is the latest publicly available as of early 2025.
Figures
Figure 1
Real per barrel oil prices, 1969 to 2024
Notes The widely reported price fluctuations (e.g., Baumeister & Kilian, 2016; Caldara, Cavallo, & Iacoviello, 2019) are here somewhat ironed out; the dark horizontal line represents the average price for the period.
Allocating oil-rent (“resource wealth” matters)
📕 “The Arabian Gulf Social Contract” →
📕 “Arabian Gulf sovereign wealth” →
Oil’s ‘blessings’ & the American dollar standard
📕 “Political maps of Arabia” →
Tables
Table 1
Crude Oil First Purchase Prices (US$ dollars per barrel)
Notes Public domain data from EIA (2025); prices shown are for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil (for comparisons with other crude variant spot prices, see Table 2); informed by: Baumeister and Kilian (2016) and Caldara, Cavallo, and Iacoviello (2019).
Table 2
OPEC Reference Basket Prices (and other spot prices, in $US per barrel)
Notes Not only do Arabian Gulf blends fetch more money but, the extraction costs in the Gulf are widely considered to be the cheapest in the world (see, e.g., Asker, Collard-Wexler, & De Loecker, 2017); public domain data from OPEC (2024).
Table 3
Oil Production (in thousands of barrels per day)
Notes Public domain data from the Energy Institute (2024) and OPEC (2024).
Table 4
Oil Reserves (reserves in millions of barrels, with production to reserves ratios in years)
Notes Public domain data from BP (2022), EIA (2024), Energy Institute (2024) and OPEC (2024); figures for production are in barrels per day (not, as with reserves, depicted in millions of barrels).
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| i | This is the website of Dr Emilie J. Rutledge who, with almost two decades’ worth of experience in managing, designing and delivering university-level economics courses, is currently Head of the Economics Department at The Open University.
 erutledge.com  Dr Emilie J. Rutledge Emilie has published over 20 peer-reviewed papers and is the author of “Monetary Union in the Gulf.” Her current research focus is on employability, the feasibility of universal basic incomes and, the oil-rich Arabian Gulf’s economic diversification and labour market reform strategies. On an ad hoc basis, Emilie provides consultancy on developing interactive university courses, alongside analytical insight on the political-economy of the Arabian Gulf. |