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Oct. 18, 2006 US petroleum consumption in 2004 amounted to 7,557,000,000 barrels per year. US net petroleum imports—the sum of imports of crude oil and imports of petroleum products less total petroleum exports—amounted to 4,415,000,000 barrels per year. So the US imported about 58% of the petroleum that it consumed. I got these figures from ethanolmarket.com. However, I converted all the figures from barrels per day to barrels per year, rounding to the closest million, so that there are trivial discrepancies. Here is their fact sheet: http://www.ethanolmarket.com/petroleumfacts.html Out of net petroleum imports then, crude oil imports, as distinguished from imports of petroleum products, amounted to 3,682,000,000 barrels a year. Here is a breakdown by country. Notice that the total I have shown is 3,692,000,000, with a cumulative rounding error, as I mentioned. My source was the US Government’s Energy Information Administration, whose figures I converted again from barrels a day to barrels a year, rounding to the nearest million: http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/rankings/crudebycountry.htm Canada……….590,000,000 Mexico……….583,000,000 Saudi Arabia……….546,000,000 Venezuela……….473,000,000 Nigeria……….393,000,000 Iraq……….239,000,000 Angola……….112,000,000 Kuwait……….88,000,000 United Kingdom……….97,000,000 Ecuador……….85,000,000 Algeria……….78,000,000 Russia……….57,000,000 Norway……….52,000,000 Colombia………52,000,000 Gabon……….52,000,000 Argentina……….22,000,000 Brazil………19,000,000 Trinidad and Tobago……….18,000,000 Indonesia……….12,000,000 Australia……..8,000,000 Libya……….7,000,000 Cameroon……….7,000,000 Guatemala……….7,000,000 Malaysia……….7,000,000 Brunei……….5,000,000 China— Beijing ……….5,000,000 Congo—Kinshasa……….5,000,000 Oman……….4,000,000 Congo—Brazzaville……….3,000,000 United Arab Emirates……….2,000,000 Ivory Coast……….2,000,000 Qatar……….1,000,000 Yemen……….1,000,000 Denmark……….1,000,000 Others……….59,000,000 Total……….3,692,000,000 From the EIA’s figures, we can ascertain that 876,000,000 barrels per year came from the Persian Gulf countries, to wit, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This is 11.6% of total US petroleum consumption. It can be seen from the list also that only 239,000,000 barrels out of 7,557,000,000 were imported from Iraq . This amounts to slightly over 3% of total US consumption. As of October 13, 2006, nationalpriorities.org showed that the cost of war in Iraq has mounted to $334,000,000,000. Anyone consulting their website in the future will see a slightly higher figure, but for now let us just accept the one I’ve quoted. Here is their Iraqometer: http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?optionfiltered=com_wrapper&Itemid=182 If the total cost of the war in Iraq , to date, had been defrayed by levying an excise tax on crude oil imported from Iraq in the calendar year 2004, it would have amounted to $1397 a barrel, which of course is outrageous and preposterous. If we spread it over a 10 year period then, assuming imports remain steady, it still amounts $140 a barrel. If we spread it over 100 years, it amounts to $14 a barrel. Most of those who cry, “The war is for oil,” are people who cannot see the real mainspring of the war—the Israel Lobby—but grab instead at what seems the most obvious scapegoat—oil. This is a sort of misinformed wannabe cynicism or realism. They think they are providing shrewd, “streetwise” insights that more artless people do not understand. They think they know the ropes. They think they know the score. They think they know what time it is. Unfortunately, most of these people do not run figures and do not understand figures that other people run. It should be obvious, however, to anyone who can and will check the figures, that the war cannot possibly be justified as a cunning economic move to enable the US to get inexpensive oil. Does it make sense to pay an excise tax of $14 a barrel for 100 years to secure a supply of cheap petroleum from Iraq ? No way! ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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