The Resource Atlas

Oil, Metals & the Physical Economy

A data-driven tour of the raw materials that move markets. Live commodity prices, proven reserves, resource-rent dependence and the boom-and-bust cycles that reshape petrostates.

Commodity super-cycle era annotations & petrostate curation — snapshot dated 2025-08-01 (1y 2mo ago). Curated data may lag the live series. View data sources.
WTI Crude
$/bbl
Brent Crude
$/bbl
Natural Gas
$/MMBtu
Gold
$/oz
Prices: FRED (EIA, IMF, LBMA). Reserves & production: BP/EIA seed data. Country data: World Bank.
Chapter 1

Who Has What?

Proven reserves and production concentrate in a handful of countries — often the same ones. Together they set global supply.

Top Oil Reserves

Seed 2024

Top Oil Producers

Seed 2024

Most Oil-Rent Dependent

World Bank
Chapter 2

The Dependence Quadrant

Every economy sits somewhere on the resource-rents / growth plane. Four archetypes emerge — from diversified rich to caught in the resource curse.

Chapter 3

Boom & Bust

Fifty years of oil prices, broken into the shocks that made and unmade petrostates. Click any era to see who won and who lost.

Chapter 4

The Reserves Clock

Reserves ÷ production = years of supply at today's extraction rate. Not a doomsday countdown — proven reserves grow as prices rise — but a snapshot of geological pressure.

Chapter 5

Curse or Blessing?

A composite vulnerability score for every tracked economy — the higher, the more exposed to commodity swings. Sort by any column.

Data sources: FRED (via EIA, IMF, LBMA); World Bank; EIA International Energy Statistics (falls back to BP/EIA seed data if no API key is configured).