Other standing resources

Eni World Oil and Gas Review
Following in the steps of BP, since 2001 Italian oil major Eni has been putting together an annual review that provides a global rundown of ongoing trends in the world's oil and natural gas markets. The review includes a chapter dedicated to crude oil production quality, an angle often missed by other data providers, and the neat online 'app' (also available on iPad) allows you to request data sets and display them in dynamic visual formats. However, despite the data being dressed up in a range of dazzling formats, there is in fact little here that cannot be better accessed on the original source websites and navigation around the app can be confusing.

http://www.eni.com/world-oil-gas-review/

Join Organisations Data Initiative (JODI)
Something of a rough diamond with much room for improvement, the JODI publicly available database is nevertheless an interesting exercise in harmonising global energy statistics. It was launched in 2001 as the brainchild of six organisations, including the IEA, OPEC and the UN Statistical Department, who often sit on different sides of the oil and gas industry. They got together at a conference in Saudi Arabia to put streamline their methodologies and pool data they each held for respective member countries. The goal was to raise awareness of the lack of transparent and reliable energy statistics against a backdrop of volatility in oil markets through the 1990s. This eventually formed the basis for the platform we see today. Since 2005 the project has been in the hands of the Saudi-based International Energy Forum (IEF), the world's largest gathering of energy ministers.

There are incomplete data sets and questions over data reliability. But the architecture of the site presents data in a variety of chart types and is flexible enough to allow customised reports, downloadable in text files, CSV files or on the Beyond 20/20 platform. There are also options to consult the metadata on each data set.

http://www.jodidata.org/

United States Geological Survey (USGS)
Another US-centric resource dating back to 1879. The in-depth geological content is aimed at an audience with a scientific background. The 'Energy Resources' program focuses on the understanding of the process which lead to the presence of hydrocarbon resources on US soil and beyond. But for specific queries on issues such as non-conventional energy sources this is a comprehensive resource.

The site is updated less regularly than others. But data are brought to life in maps of the US and beyond. There is a database of fairly dense publications, and the data finder and interactive Energy Vision tools need some prior understanding to interpret properly even if information is graphically presented. But some research is condensed into easily digestible fact sheets for non-experts. The Twitter feed as @USGS also does an admirable job of trying to liven up the hard science.

http://energy.usgs.gov/

Revenue Watch Institute EITI Report Analysis
RWI have sifted through the 50+ reports produced by countries participating in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), extracting key revenue data items, and created the basis for like-to-like comparisons of the data in them for the first time. The user-friendly tools allow you to analyse revenue and payment details for all EITI reports to date, in both English and French, and compare data across all countries. This is a huge service to EITI reports which began 2003 but which have had no set data standards or formats to date. The full data sets can be downloaded as a CSV or MS Excel File, as well as the country EITI reports in full. Beyond this, 'report quality indicators' are used to assess how each country's reporting scores against standards devised by the RWI team.

http://data.revenuewatch.org/eiti/

OpenOil Wiki Guides
Essentially a 'Wikipedia' for the global oil and gas industry, OpenOil's own series of country-level wiki guides cover eight countries and counting and are available in both English and selected local languages, including Arabic, Spanish, French and Kurdish. Written in non-technical language the aim is to provide non-experts with a one stop shop for the all important context needed to make sense of the global issues affecting the sector, such as the Resource Curse or the booming oil services industry, and how they are affecting individual producing countries. The guides also include profiles of the big industry players such as Exxon and Total, touching on both their global and local presence.

This is not the place to go for original research or data, but as a repository of all the information currently publicly available on the industry. Full sets of references allow you to follow the information back to its source. The site also contains links to external sources such as original contracts and oil and gas laws where available. The collaborative editing process used to create the guides also means that they can be constantly updated as the scenario shifts.

http://wiki.openoil.net/