China and the US dominate the world's fossil fuel producers

Fossil fuels remain the backbone of global energy supply, powering electricity grids, heavy industry, transportation systems and petrochemical production.

Visualcapitalist.com ranks the world's top 25 fuel producers in 2024 by physical production, combining coal, oil and natural gas in tonnes.

The source notes that production is compared by mass, not energy content. Different fuels contain different amounts of energy per tonne, so the rankings should not be interpreted as a measure of each country's total energy production.

The data used by the aforementioned source comes from the Austrian Ministry of Finance. Natural gas production is converted from cubic meters to tons.

• China's coal leads fuel production by a wide margin

With fuel production of 4.8 billion tons in 2024, China ranks first in this ranking by a wide margin. Its production by weight is more than double that of the United States, which is in second place.

China's dominant position is overwhelmingly determined by coal. The country mined 4.4 billion tons of coal in 2024, accounting for almost all of its fuel production (by weight) and more than half of global coal production.

In addition to being the world's largest coal producer, China is also the world's largest coal consumer, using almost all of its domestic production to generate electricity and power its industrial and manufacturing sectors.

• US dominates oil and natural gas

The United States ranks second overall, producing 2.3 billion tons of the fuel in 2024. Unlike China, its production mix is more balanced between oil, natural gas, and coal.

US oil production reached 948.8 million tons, while natural gas production totaled 854.6 million tons, and coal production stood at 473.8 million tons.

Globally, the US is the leading producer of both oil and natural gas, accounting for approximately 25% of global natural gas production and 20.5% of oil production in 2024.

• A concentrated global market

The top five countries - China, the United States, Russia, India and Indonesia - produced a combined 10.6 billion tonnes of the fuel in 2024. This represents approximately 63% of the global total (by weight).

Russia is third with 1.5 billion tonnes, supported by large volumes of oil, natural gas and coal. India is fourth with 1.1 billion tonnes, with coal accounting for the vast majority of its production. Indonesia completes the top five with 921.4 million tonnes, again mainly produced by coal.

In this ranking, the top 25 countries account for 91% of global fossil fuel production, illustrating how concentrated fossil fuel extraction is in a relatively small group of countries.