oil imports

Oil Barrels via Shutterstock

U.S. oil imports have declined very significantly over the past four years. The Obama Administration claims credit for increased oil production and reduced U.S. oil imports based on recent policy changes. Mitt Romney proposes other changes to substantially decrease future U.S. imports. All politics aside, what factors have actually contributed towards reducing U.S. oil imports recently?[read more]

Saudia Arabia via Shutterstock

I've seen numerous references in the last several days to a Citgroup analysis suggesting that Saudi Arabia might become a net oil importer by 2030.  The premise behind this startling conclusion seems to be that economic growth and demographic trends would continue pushing up domestic Saudi demand for petroleum products and...[read more]

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently published an article on 2011 U.S. crude oil imports. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at where the U.S. currently obtains its oil, and how that has changed over the past decade. The EIA story is: Nearly 69% of U.S. crude oil imports originated from five countries...[read more]

Twisting Facts to Support an Agenda Thomas L. Friedman, a New York Times Op-Ed Columnist, frequently writes on the topic of energy and the environment. One persistent habit he has is to omit certain important facts from a story — facts so important that they would greatly undermine the point he is trying to make. His latest column...[read more]

One of my Top 10 Energy Stories of 2011 was the fact that the U.S. had become a net exporter of finished petroleum products such as diesel and gasoline. In fact, because gasoline and diesel prices were so high, fuel exports were valued at $88 billion, which made them the top value export in 2011 for the first time ever:[read more]

When I worked in Scotland, one of my managers was a wise Englishman named Graham Walker. As with many people whose paths I have crossed in my life, some nuggets of wisdom were transferred from Graham into my long-term memory. One of the things that stuck with me was Graham’s push for decisiveness. He would tell me “Just make a decision and move on. We have a business to run here.” Graham would say that most of the time the decisions would prove to be correct, and when they weren’t we would live with them or correct them down the road. (And of course if a person frequently makes incorrect decisions, then they can be replaced with someone who makes better decisions). But his point was that you can’t live in fear of making the wrong decision, because then nothing gets done.[read more]

Job growth in clean energy is a tricky subject. As Brookings found, green sector employment has increased substantially in recent years, and this trend is to be applauded. But a key economic challenge is to make sure that we aren’t just swapping green jobs for fossil energy jobs, and are actually achieving net job growth. And an important way to do that is to look beyond the US market.[read more]

Let me begin by addressing the article itself, which commits the fundamental sin of not providing enough hard data to contextualize the news item. According to the US Dept. of Energy’s Annual Energy Review (Table 5.1 Petroleum Overview, 1949-2009, the all-time high for both US oil consumption and oil imports occurred in 2005 (20.802 and 12.549 million barrels[1] per day, respectively, making imports 60% of consumption).[read more]

peakoil.com -> chinadaily.com.cn : China's oil imports will continue to see solid growth this year, with more than half of the country's total oil consumption coming from abroad, industry insiders said. It is inevitable for the country - the world's second largest oil consumer - to see a robust increase of imports, as domestic...[read more]

I am traveling later this week, and will be on the road for nine days (Colorado, New York, Massachusetts). I was trying to wrap up the loose ends from my previous post with a much more comprehensive look at the ethanol/import issue before I travel. However, there are a couple of questions I had for the EIA before I finish up. As soon as...[read more]