Original Usa Oil Reserve.

[sevenOP]

Did the USA originally have the largest oil reserves in the world, and any figure on what quantity that reserve was ?

[heathfield]

Try Google for "Did the USA originally have the largest oil reserves in the world" and find loads of links on your question. Apparently the US could hold more oil than all the OPEC countries put together, though this may be once shale oil reserves are included.

[bert_h]

It sounds most unlikely. However, when John D Rockefeller started extracting them in the late 1800's, they were probably the largest known reserves in the world.

Saudi Arabia has by far the largest readily-recoverable oil reserves in the world. However, for even larger reserves which are more difficult to recover, see the Wikipedia article on the Athabasca Tar Sands.

[Peter Pedant]

My dear late father d.1972 said as far as he could recollect the worlds oil reserves would run out in thirty years

and it has always been thirty

before the war it was thirty, he said

which means that oil reserves is a statistic that has no real meaning

[BillyBB]

Reserves are the amount that is known and has been properly surveyed. It is nothing to do with actual amount that may or may not be in the ground. But that doesn't make good headlines and journalists often have little clue as to what they write about.
Pretty much all "reserves" of anything can be said to run out within a decade or two. Because why would you do expensive surveys only to find that the value of your mine etc drops because the supply is deemed to be greater when you declare larger reserves.

[sevenOP]

Thanks for your replies.

One thing that I was hoping to find out was just how much oil the USA had used up in comparison to say amount of oil Saudi had: put simply, did the USA had more than Saudi had and did the USA use up all their supply.