11. Russia

With abundant oil reserves (figure 7 ), the largest gas reserves on the planet, and significant coal resources, Russia has played a major role on the world energy scene for decades. In the 1980s, Russian oil production exceeded 10 million barrels per day. At the time, oil revenues were Soviet Russia's main source of foreign currency. The fall in the price of oil, which led to a drastic drop in export earnings, is often seen as one of the main reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. As Mikhail Gorbachev put it, "for lack of money, all we had to do was close the house and close down". In the 1990s, Russian oil production fell by 50%, before starting to grow again at the end of the decade. In the...