World's largest...in oil it's relative

On October 2nd, Russia was declared world's largest oil producer in terms of September production, courtesy of OPEC's own statistics.

This wasn't the first time its production had nudged ahead of Saudi Arabia's. Since August 2006 it's been in the statistical lead often. Even the US Energy Information Administration describes Saudi Arabia as the world's second largest crude oil producer after Russia. What was a more significant first was that Russian production exceeded 10m bpd (10.01) in September. That was a record for Russia and certainly close to Saudi Arabia's production high.

As many have pointed out, the only reason Russia earned the temporary largest monthly producer award was because OPEC has been operating under voluntary production cuts. Saudi Arabia, the largest producer within OPEC by far, produced "only" 8.1 million bpd in September. As recently as 2007 was producing 10.25 million bpd on average before dipping down, then back up in June 2008, a month before oil's peak, to 10 million bpd.

Of course by many other measures, Saudi Arabia wins world's largest hands-down. The EIA for instance names Saudi Arabia as the world's largest producer and exporter of "total petroleum liquids." Note the "exporter" tag. Thus the hair-splitting begins.

So what about some of the other "largests"?

The "world's largest crude oil reserve" has been claimed by Canada, Iraq, and needless tos ay, Saudi Arabia. However, remove the word "crude" and you have Venezuela claiming to having the largest oil reserves (unconventional reserves in the Orinoco Heavy Oil Belt).

This is all without touching the whole proven/probable, identified/recoverable, conventional/unconventional mincing.

Even more fun is the latest way some analysts have taken to dividing the oil producing world into four parts: OPEC, its biggest producer Saudia Arabia, non-OPEC, and its biggest producer Russia. Of these four units, the largest oil "producer" is the non-OPEC sans Russia segment (hat tip to Gregor Macdonald, Seeking Alpha).

The other way to change the game is to divide the producers into multi-national versus national companies (in this way, publicly traded Exxon is in the same league as Saudi Aramco). Mix the two game changers and you can figure out the largest in a whole host of new categories. So does this make Brazil's Petrobras the largest non-Opec-non-Russian-non-state company? Again relative: Although publicly traded, it's technically semi-public.

Certainly Brazil nabs the prize for world's largest light crude oil field found in 30 years, and third largest ever, Brazil Sugar Loaf. Of course that is currently untapped. So, as far as who is the largest producer in terms able-to-flip-the-switch-tonight production, Saudi Arabia is still the winner.

Meanwhile, forget about production, let's look at consumption. That's easy for now - it's the US with China as a close -- and closing -- second. Ever mindful of their spot, Chinese state-owned oil companies started investing in production assets outside of China is 1993. According to the Journal of Energy Security, Chinese oil majors have acquired a variety of holdings in Angola, Azerbaijan, Canada, Chad, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Myanmar (Burma), Nigeria, Peru, Russia, Singapore (pending), Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela.

If it were possible to add up all the oil interests China controls indirectly, would it too qualify as a world's largest?