Mineral Oil is not distributed evenly in the world. However, most of the oil and natural gas reserves are in Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, and Iran. Though minerals have played unknowingly huge importance in our daily life across the globe, there are implications for such distribution. The implications are as follows:
1. Uneven Supply Chain: Given the complexity of value chains, no country can control the entire critical mineral value chain. This was evident during the initial phase of the Coronavirus outbreak.
2. Economic Viability: Uneven distribution of the mineral oil across the world, leads to economic consequences like inflation, for the importing country.
3. Energy Security: The cross-border mineral explorations leads to Oil Surplus and Global Liquidity.
4. Human migration: large groups of people often migrate (move) to a place that has the resources they need or want and migrate away from a place that lacks the resources they need. Example: The Middle East is one of the top destinations for the Indian migrants.
5. Economic activities in a region related to resources in that region: Economic activities that are directly related to resources include farming, fishing, ranching, timber processing, oil and gas production, mining, and tourism.
6. Trade: Countries may not have the resources that are important to them, but trade enables them to acquire those resources from places that do.
7. Wealth and quality of life: The well-being and wealth of a place are determined by the quality and quantity of goods and services available to people in that place. This measure is known as the standard of living.
This unequal distribution of resources, the legacy of imperialism, is the result of human rather than natural conditions.