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FUEL CONSUMPTION

Fuels and energy utilisation .......................................................................................................................... 1

Fuel consumption ...................................................................................................................................... 2
Fuels in world energy production ......................................................................................................... 3
Fuels in electricity production............................................................................................................... 5
Fuels in end-use energy consumption ................................................................................................... 6
Fuel-to-energy conversion factors ........................................................................................................ 7
Energy management .................................................................................................................................. 8
Energy future......................................................................................................................................... 9
References ............................................................................................................................................... 11

FUELS AND ENERGY UTILISATION

Besides air, water, and food, humankind needs energy services: lighting, heating, cooling, pulling and
pushing goods (actuators), transporting goods and people, and powering information devices
(semaphores, radio and TV transponders, computing machines...).

We might question how much energy we need to satisfy our wanted services, but who knows the answer.
If we look into the past, trying to extrapolate into the future, humankind energy expenditure has grown
differently on different energy services:
• Energy used to procure food and water is now (say year 2000, per capita) five times larger than
106 years ago. This is the consequence of most people living in large service cities, and only few
people devoted to provide food and water to all.
• Energy used for transportation is now sixty times larger than 500 years ago (the start of ocean
travels). Is that surge in transportation-energy consumption really needed? Human mobility a
basic human need, but to what extent? Is it not really a burden sometime, wasting nowadays
several hours a day to go to work and back home?
• Telecommunication technology, on the other hand, seems no so energy-eager (compare a
videoconference-meeting with a presence-meeting arranged via individual car transportation).
However, every conceivable non-inert system (from biological organisms to just mechanical
clockwork mechanisms) generates entropy, which must be evacuated as heat, and must be
compensated by an exergy input to keep the process steady.

At present we only use two final-user commercial-energy carriers: fuels (piped or batch-delivered) and
electricity (wired through the grid, or stored in batteries). Human metabolism needs some 100 W/cap (100
watts per capita), and humankind consumes some additional 1800 W/cap of final energy, coming from
2400 W/cap of primary energy: some 300 W of electricity (produced from some 900 W of primary
energy, mostly from fossil fuels), plus some 1500 W of end fuels (refined from raw fossil fuels, and used
for transportation, heating, and so on).

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Most of the energy trade involves fuels, presently, in the past, and in the foreseeable future, as
summarised in Table 1.

Table 1. Short summary of fuel share in world energy utilization.

Year 2000 Year 2020 prediction
a
Primary energy Energy carriers (end use) Primary energyb Energy carriers (end use)
90% Fuels 84% Fuels 90% Fuels 82% Fuels
7% Nuclear 16% Electricity 5% Nuclear 18% Electricity
3% Hydro Electricity production: 3% Hydro Electricity production:
• 66% Fuels 2% Wind • 65% Fuels
• 17% Nuclear • 10% Nuclear
• 17% Hydro • 15% Hydro
• 10% Wind, solar...
a
Gross values: 2400 W/cap (→460⋅10 J/yr=10900 Mtoe/yr); population, 6.1·109 cap; GDP, 6700 €/cap.
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b
Gross values: 3200 W/cap (→620⋅1018 J/yr=14600 Mtoe/yr); population, 7.6·109 cap; GDP, 10000 €/cap.

When dealing with world-wide-average energy usage, we must recall how uneven (unfair) the distribution
can be, with a third of mankind presently lacking electricity.

Fuel consumption
Fuel consumption, as fuel price and fuel availability, may be considered as market fuel-properties, and be
jointly dealt with physico-chemical properties of fuels, treated aside, but we have preferred to deal with
separately here.

The substances collectively known as fuels (basically coal, oil, gas, biofuels and synthetic fuels) are
mainly used as convenient energy stores, because of their high specific energy-release when burnt with
ambient air, a most fortunate situation, because a 15-fold (for hydrocarbons; a 34-fold for hydrogen) mass
of air is required to burn a given mass of fuel, and air is freely available everywhere anytime (has not to
be carried on). The burning process, however, is not essential for the release of fuel-and-oxidiser energy;
the same global process takes place in fuel cells without combustion. Fuels, as energy source, are used for
heat generation, for work generation, for cold generation, or for chemical transformations (see details in
What fuels are used for). Fuels are also used for non-burning purposes, as for the chemical synthesis of
materials, mainly polymers (fibres, plastics, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, mineral oils, etc.), not
considered here furthermore. In a summary, fuels may be used (chronological or difficulty ordering):
1. To produce heat in a burner (thermo-chemical converter). This heat may be used for direct
heating, indirect heating (heat exchangers), for candescent lighting, for feeding a thermal machine
(heat engine, refrigerator, or heat pump) to produce power, cold, or more heat, or for materials
processing.
2. To produce work (and heat) in a heat engine (mechano-chemical converter). This work may be
used to produce propulsion, or electricity, or cold, or more heat.
3. To produce electricity (and heat) in a fuel cell (electro-chemical converter). This electricity may
be used to produce propulsion, cold, more heat, or for materials processing.

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4. To produce materials (and heat) in a reactor (chemo-chemical converter); e.g. polymer synthesis,
oils, perfumes...

Fuels may be considered as primary energy (i.e. directly extracted from natural sources and put on the
market), as energy carriers or secondary-energy source (i.e. manufactured fuels such as crude-oil
distillates and synthetic fuels), or as final energy (bought by the end-user for final consumption).

Fuel consumption, both as primary energy (i.e. as found in Nature) and final energy source (i.e. as input
to the end user), is today the major contributor (near 90%) to energy use, both at source and at destination
(up to the Middle Ages, animal power, water-mills and wind-mills were large contributors; in the far
future, nuclear fusion might take over). The analyses of the utilization of: energy as a commodity
(sources, transportation, storage and consumption) is sometimes called Energetics.

Fuels major share in world energy market (80% to 90%) means that the two terms, fuels and energy, can
be used indistinctly both for primary and for final consumption. Beware, however, that some people used
indistinctly 'electricity' and 'energy', without such a rational as above. On the other hand, it is worth
considering that all terrestrial energy (except the minor contribution of gravitational tidal energy) is
ultimately of nuclear origin: nuclear fission inside the Earth generates geothermal energy (also a minor
share of the overall Earth energy budget), and nuclear fusion at the Sun providing the major energy input,
that is partially converted in the short term (weeks) to hydraulic energy and wind energy, in the mid term
(a year) to biomass energy, and in the very long term (million years) to fossil fuels, that is the dominant
commercial source nowadays.

FUELS IN WORLD ENERGY PRODUCTION

Primary energy production (i.e. resource consumption) is computed from the budgets and estimates of
industrial producers:
• Coal mines and coal importers
• Crude-oil extractors and importers
• Natural gas extractors and importers
• Nuclear energy generators
• Renewable energies: hydroelectric plants, wind-mill fields, solar energy fields, biomass industries,
etc. Most of them are accounted basically by the subsidies they ask for.

The total primary energy consumption in the world (year 2000) was 460⋅1018 J/yr (i.e. 11 000 Mtoe/yr, or
an average of 15 TW in the world, or 2.4 kW average per person). Table 2 presents the distribution by
type of energy source and its time evolution. Traditional energy balances are presented in toe-units
(tonne-oil-equivalent) per year) or other odd units, but the average per unit time (e.g. in 1012 W=1 TW)
seems a more rational rate measure and allows easier comparison with single power devices (e.g. with a
typical nuclear power station of 1 GW). We agree that a year period is a more natural unit of time than a
second, for human activities (who measures salaries in €/s?), but conversion errors and encumbrance are
minimised if only SI-units are used, and one may use in most cases the simple approximation 1 yr=30·106
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s, which is less than 5% below the exact figure, since the data may have not higher accuracy (1 yr=π·107 s
gives less than 0.5% error). Besides, world averages have less dispersion than local ones (at a given
instant, some places have daylight and others night, some have summertime and others winter). Some
energy unit conversions are presented in Table 3 (e.g. 460⋅1018 J/yr=15⋅1012 W=130⋅1012
kWh/yr=11 000⋅106 toe/yr, that divided by 6.1⋅109 people corresponds to 2.4 kW/cap).

Fig. 1. Time evolution of world annual primary-energy consumption: a) in Mtoe, b) in TW. From IEA
http://www.iea.org/.

Table 2. Primary energy consumption in % (year 2000).

World First world Third world EU-15 Spain
(460⋅10 J/yr) (250⋅10 J/yr) (190⋅10 J/yr) (65⋅10 J/yr) (5.1⋅1018 J/yr)
18 18 18 18

Fuels 90 86 95 81 85
coal 24 20 29 18 18
crude oil 36 41 26 43 53
natural gas 21 22 20 19 13
biomass (not traded) 9 3 20 1 <1
Nuclear 7 11 2 15 13
Hydroelectric 3 3 3 4 2

Table 3. Some energy unit conversions.

Unit Equivalence
Tonne oil equivalent (toe) 1 toe = 42⋅109 J
Tonne coal equivalent 1 tce = 30⋅109 J
Cubic metre of natural gas (STP) 1 m3NG = 40⋅106 J
Kilowatthour 1 kWh = 3.6⋅106 J
6
Thermie (10 cal) 1 thermie = 4.2⋅106 J
Therm (105 BTU) 1 therm = 0.11⋅109 J
Barrel of crude (0.159 m3) 1 barrel = 6.1⋅109 J
British Thermal Unit 1 BTU = 1.1⋅103 J
Kilocalorie (Calorie) 1 kcal = 4.2⋅103 J
Quad (1015 BTU) 1 Quad = 1.1⋅1018 J
Exajoule 1 EJ = 1.0⋅1018 J
Electronvolt 1 eV = 0.16⋅10-18 J
Erg 1 erg = 0.10⋅10-6 J

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Notice that renewable energy sources (RES) in 2000, basically hydroelectric and biomass, only amount to
a 10% of world energy coverage (6% in the UE) and all the rest come from exhaustible sources; there is a
firm will however, to come back to a more sustainable exploitation of energy resources, and the objective
is of covering by renewable sources up to 30% of the world energy production in 2020 and up to 60% in
2100 (UE target to 2010 is 12% of RES). Notice that 'resources' refers to the total amount in Nature,
whereas “reserves” refers to that portion of resources that can be economically recovered at today's
selling prices, using today's technologies and under today's legislation.

Per capita consumption of energy is oddly distributed (more than food, but less than water): the 2.2
kW/cap average comes from 4 kW/cap in EU, 8 kW/cap in USA, and less than 1 kW/cap in the Third
World). It might be compared with the metabolic consumption of 0.1 kW/cap and the averaged Sun input
on Earth of 30 000 kW/cap. Spain primary energy consumption is 5.1⋅1018 J/yr=120⋅106 toe/yr=4 kW/cap.

It may be interesting to compare fuel consumption (basically energy) to other basic human needs: world
annual per-capita consumption is some 1000 kg of drinking water, 300 kg of oxygen from the air, 200 kg
of solid food, and 600 kg of coal, 500 kg of crude-oil and 300 kg of natural gas (i.e. 1400 kg of traded
energy-products; more if biomass from developing countries were added).

FUELS IN ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION

An intermediate step in energy utilisation (between primary consumption and final consumption) is
energy transformation into a more useful form of energy, basically electricity production (but also town
gas and coque production) from primary energy sources. In 2000, some 30% of all primary energy was
used in the production of electricity, split by type of primary energy in Fig. 2 and Table 4. Notice that the
major source for electricity is the combustion of fuels, in spite that many first-grade books say that
electricity comes from water).

Fig. 2. Time evolution of world annual electricity production (in TWh. From IEA http://www.iea.org/.

Table 4. Electricity production: total and percentage by source type (year 2000).
% in the world % in USA % in EU-15 % in Spain
(1.7 TW= (440 GW= (300 GW= (20 GW=
15 000 TWh/yr= 3900 TWh= 2500 TWh= 170 TWh=
54⋅1018 J/yr) 14⋅1018 J/yr) 9⋅1018 J/yr) 0.5⋅1018 J/yr)

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Fuels 65 73 51 46
coal 37 52 27 39
crude oil 9 3 6 3
natural gas 17 16 18 4
biomass (not traded) 2 2 - <1
Nuclear 20 20 34 35
Hydroelectric 15 7 15 19

FUELS IN END-USE ENERGY CONSUMPTION

Final energy consumption is the energy finally consumed in the transport, industrial, commercial,
agricultural, public and household sectors (it excludes deliveries to the energy transformation sector and
to the energy industries themselves). It can be measured by type of final energy (Fig. 3 and Table 5) or by
type of end use (Table 6).

Fig. 3. Time evolution of world annual final-energy consumption (in Mtoe). From IEA
http://www.iea.org/.

Table 5. Final energy use by energy type (year 2000).

% in the world % in EU-15 % in Spain
(315⋅1018 J/yr) (44⋅1018 J/yr) (3.8⋅1018 J/yr)
Fuels 84 79 81
coal 15 3 3
crude oil 41 56 64
natural gas 17 26 14
biomass (not traded) 13 4 -
Electricity 16 21 19

The total final energy consumption in the world is 315⋅1018 J/yr=7000⋅106 toe/yr. The largest share in
electricity generation is by coal (50% world-wide, 40% in EU). Final energy consumption in Spain is
3.8⋅1018 J/yr=86⋅106 toe/yr.

Table 6. Final energy use by sector (year 2000).

% in the world % in EU-15 % in Spain
(315⋅1018 J/yr) (44⋅1018 J/yr) (3.8⋅1018 J/yr)
Industry (construction, manufacturing, extractive) 30 32 35
Transportation 25 31 40
Commerce and services (offices, hospitals) 15 11 10

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Residential (home) 20 23 15
Non-energy consumption 10 3 -

About 20% of world primary energy (30% of the final-energy consumption) is used to power
transportation (1% coal, 90% oil-derivatives, 6% gas, plus 3% electricity). Some 17% of anthropogenic
CO2 emissions also come from transport, being also responsible for some 20% of the projected increase
in both global energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions until 2030. Fossil fuels will continue to
provide the largest share in vehicle power consumption; EU forecast for year 2020 stills base >80% of
that power from fossil fuels, with a rising on natural gas to 10%, supplemented by some 8% renewable
biofuels and some 5% hydrogen (from fossil and renewable sources). Rough average energy consumption
in transportation is:
• Per passenger: 3.0 MJ/km by plane, 1.8 MJ/km by car, and 0.9 MJ/km by bus or train. In
equivalent fuel litres per 100 km, the figures are: 10 L by plane, 6 L by car, 3L by bus, and 2 L
by train.
• Per tonne of freight: 3.0 MJ/km by truck, 0.7 MJ/km by ship and 0.5 MJ/km by train.

It is appropriate here to quote the CO2 emissions of different transportation means: some 250 g/(km·pax)
for plains (down to 100 g/(km·pax) for the most efficient), some 200 g/km for cars (down to 130 g/km for
new cars in EU from 2012), some 200 g/km for motorcycles, some 80 g/(km·pax) for buses, and some 60
g/(km·pax) for trains.

Nearly 40% of final-energy consumption in UE takes place inside buildings (heating, lighting, cooling
and other appliances).

FUEL-TO-ENERGY CONVERSION FACTORS

Notice that the conversion from material budgets (coal, oil, gas, uranium) to energy budgets is an agreed
standard and not the thermodynamic exergy (the difference is not very large however, except for nuclear
fuels); the lower heating value is chosen for coal and oil, the higher heating valued for natural gas.

For nuclear power plants, a standard value of 33% in energy efficiency is assumed, taking no account of
the amount of uranium used, i.e., for an amount Ee of electricity generated, a raw energy of 3Ee is
accounted for (1 MWh→0.086/0.33=0.2606 toe). The actual amount of nuclear raw-material used
depends a lot on the technology used; e.g. a given uranium-ore, would yield some 50 times more
electricity if processed in a breeder reactor (where most of the fertile U-238 atoms transform in fissile Pu-
239 atoms) than if processed in a normal reactor.

Similarly, a standard value of 10% in energy efficiency is assumed for geothermal plants.

Table 7. Recommended conversion factors.

Fuel Ascribed energy
Coal bit. 0.58 toe/tonne
Coal black lignite 0.32 toe/tonne
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Coal brown lignite 0.18 toe/tonne

Crude oil 1.02 toe/tonne
LPG 1.13 toe/tonne
Gasoline 1.07 toe/tonne
Kerosene 1.06 toe/tonne
Diesel 1.03 toe/tonne
Fuel-oil 0.96 toe/tonne
Natural gas 0.090 toe/thermie
Hydraulic energy 0.086 toe/MWh
Nuclear energy 0.2606 toe/MWh
Geothermal energy 0.86 toe/MWh
From IEA (International Energy Agency) data.

Talking about mass-to-energy conversion factors, it is worth mentioning that the main mass-percentage in
fossil fuels is carbon, which burns with oxygen in the air to yield nearly four-times more mass of carbon
dioxide (44 g every 12 g, from stoichiometry C+O2=CO2), so that in crude words, to release the average
energy we trade in the world, per person and year, we are shovelling 1 tonne of carbon from below
ground to the troposphere above us (and that tonne was bonded to some 0.2 tonnes of hydrogen, and is
released bonded to 3.7 tonnes of oxygen); world CO2 emissions in 2005 were 24·1012 kg (6500 MtC/yr,
from the 11 000 Mtoe/yr of primary energy).

Notice that final-energy consumption must be less than the primary-energy production, because of the
'unavoidable energy losses' in the production and transportation processes (e.g. world production 440
EJ/yr and world consumption 315 EJ/yr). Thermodynamics, however, just says that:
• Energy is conserved, in an isolated system, no matter the processes taking place.
• Exergy, i.e. energy available for work, in an otherwise isolated system in a given environment,
can only decrease with time in every process.

From that, if the only energy need of humans were comfort heat, cooking power and even sanitary hot
water, this final energy consumption could be met by extracting a much smaller primary energy from
fossil fuels and forcing the rest of the energy to come from the ambient, like in a common heat pump, that
produces three or four times the energy it consumes.

To measure energy-consumption efficiency, two ratios are used:

• Per capita energy consumption
• Per gross-national-internal-product energy consumption. Third-world countries consume three
times more energy per GNP than developed countries.

Energy management
Energy is a first-need good, as food and water, and its supply has been traditionally managed by public
administrations. The trend, however, is towards a free-market management with political restrictions (e.g.
taxes on fossil energy) and incentives (e.g. subsidies on renewable energies) to procure the following
social guaranties (safety, security, affordability and sustainability):
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• Reasonable energy safety. Some risks always exist, and society and individuals must establish the
level of acceptable risks (should you carry a gas-lighter in your pocket?, in an airplane?, should
the domestic grid voltage be low or high?).
• Reliable energy supply. Some unreliability always exists, and society and individuals must
establish appropriate levels of reliability, knowing that the costs grow exponentially (should a
one-minute electricity-dropout in a commercial store be considered an admissible minor nuisance,
or a great costly disturbance to be protected from?; how wide should the margin in supply voltage
or frequency be acceptable?).
• Reasonable energy pricing. Should disperse occasional users (e.g. weekend second-residences)
pay energy (and water, telephone, etc.) at the same price as central city dwellers? Should large
energy consumers pay more or less per unit energy consumed?
• Reasonable energy impact on the environment. Some environment impact always exists, and
society and individuals must establish the level of acceptable impact that energy utilisation
(production, transportation and end use) may cause.

There are other aspects related to fuel consumption that have not been considered here: strategic reserves,
strategy to fulfil demand variations, marketing policies, waste management, etc.

On the strategic dependence side, for instance, Europe imports more than 50% of the primary energy it
consumes (in 2000, and it is increasing; in the case of Spain this external dependence is >70%).

On another side, to adapt electricity generation to demand, in view that electricity can hardly be
accumulated, an order of power-plant activation priority is established, with non-storable hydroelectric,
windmill and nuclear plants being always enabled, then cheap-coal and storable-hydroelectric power
stations, and then combined-cycle natural-gas plants, that are more expensive to run. Besides, due to this
changing-load effect, and particularly to the changing-input conditions (low hydraulic year, low winds,
pre-programmed maintenance, unexpected shut-downs, and so on, the design capacity of available power
plants must be larger than the expected average production.

ENERGY FUTURE
The future of energy (as a human commodity) looks dark nowadays, even darker than the future of clean
water and food. The key problem is that energy consumption is growing not proportionally to population
growth (as food may be), but at a much higher rate (because of the 'developed' way-of-life, and new
energy demands from a crowed world, like massive water desalination), with two associated
consequences:
• Environmental impact, because the largest share in energy production comes from fuel
combustion, which generates global-warming gases and chemical pollution (global and local),
and other energy sources do not show a clear alternative: nuclear fission has the unsolved
problem of waste fuel and proliferation, and renewable energy sources are not so powerful
neither free of environmental impact (e.g. effects of wind mills on fauna and landscape).

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• Scarcity of cheap resources, because readily-available oil, gas, and coal deposits, are being
exhausted at a quicker pace than new reserves are found.

As a clear solution to this energy problem is presently not at hand, the most rational approach might be to
push along several fronts, looking forward to solving some of the inconveniences (being alert for new
possibilities), and weighting more on those showing better promise at the time being. In particular:
• New fossil fuel plants seem to be unavoidable for decades to come, at least. Cleaner and more
energy-efficient combustion processes must be develop for the traditional fuels, e.g. using
natural-gas combined-cycle plants with a thermal efficiency nearly double than old coal-fired
plants, capturing CO2 emissions from traditional exhaust gases (e.g. using the carbonatation-
calcination process), or helped by the oxy-combustion process, or directly from the fuel by
reformation of the fossil fuel to less-contaminant fuels before combustion (what drives towards
the hydrogen economy), etc.
• New nuclear fission plants can alleviate in the short term the energy problem, their problem
with nuclear waste perhaps being solved in the future, but their remote risk of massive life
destruction renders them too risky for wide-world proliferation (energy consumption in the
future will increase the most amongst presently underdeveloped societies). Power plants
intrinsically safe to runaway, intrinsically non-proliferating, and making best use of fissionable
material, should be developed. Nuclear fusion research must be further encouraged, as being the
only panacea in the horizon.
• New renewable plants must be promoted, even subsidized if one takes account of the social
costs implied in traditional power plants (from human health to world politics), but not as a
present panacea: nowadays, they cannot provide a complete substitute to fossil-fuel plants, nor
in decades to come. Among renewables, the two approaches with wider future are, first, biomass
cultures for biofuels (from non-alimentary plants), and second, thermal solar energy plants,
although wind energy is developing faster, at present.

Perhaps the best summing up is:

• Make people aware of this gigantic energy-problem by fostering scientific and social education.
Public acceptance is a pre-requisite in developed societies, without which, economic criteria and
technology availability are powerless.
• Make energy economy more explicit (including waste management and health-care costs), for
consumers to minimize the real cost/benefit ratio. Energy seems to be presently too cheap for
people to care about (e.g. when buying powered appliances, or when using vehicles), or too
rigid to allow for sensible choices (e.g. biofuels are not yet alternatives vehicle fossil-fuels).
• Invest in basic and applied research on energy management and related environmental impact.
There is no proportion between the ratio of R&D expenses and consumption expenses, between
energy technologies and other technologies.
• Meanwhile, diversify the effort according to actual achievements (facts) and reasonable
expectations (expert prospective; without preconceptions, fears and utopias). Avoid being too
enthusiast on a single goal; the best energy diet may be, as for a food diet, variety and
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temperance (with green matter being preferable to meat, and paying attention to 'oysters and
lobsters').

References
• www.worldenergy.org. World Energy Council (WEC); a UN-accredited non-government, non-
profit organisation.
• www.iea.org. International Energy Agency (IEA); a 26-member-states policy-advice cooperative
agency.
• http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy/index_en.html. European Union's Directorate-General for
Energy and Transport.
• http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview. BP is a global energy company.

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