I hate this graphic. Should we consider the 3rd dimension as well? I mean, the "thickness" of the barrel is much bigger behind e.g. UAE than Oman. From the numbers it seems we shouldn't.
But the boundary follows the arc on the top and bottom, so it's definetily projected to the half surface of a cilynder, but the voronoi lines are straight, but they should curve just like the top and bottom.
I would be legitimately impressed if the data is scaled based on the volume of the implied cylindrical section defined by that surface border, if only because that's a pretty annoying calculation to make.
I upvoted this post because it was good information, and then I read you and upvoted your post also. Yeah this is stylish, but a representation that showed "rate of export" with "estimated reserves" with roughly how much has already been exported, country by country, would be pretty sweet and probably pretty doable with some effort.
They can group them, drill down, there are many way to make them readable. That's the actual work of data visualization: simplify something complex to convey a message, leading the reader to the relevant data that support the message, letting them understand it.
Here nothing is readable with the exception of the big polygons, and data are absolutely unclear even when the polygon is visible