Making our own minds up as to why energy prices are rising

I no longer bother to read people's arguments as to why gas prices are high... Speculation... no speculation.... ? To me, looking at some raw numbers is one easy way to understand why the gas prices are going up so fast. Prepare for a simple news story below with hard numbers that tells it how it is.... Pay attention, this is very interesting...

U.S. Crude Oil Field Production (Thousand Barrels per Day)

These numbers are going down.... USA oil production is down to the levels of 1948 before peak production of the 1970s.

Decade	Year-0	Year-1	Year-2	Year-3	Year-4	Year-5	Year-6	Year-7	Year-8	Year-9
1850's										0
1860's	1	6	8	7	6	7	10	9	10	12
1870's	14	14	17	24	30	33	25	37	42	55
1880's	72	76	83	64	66	60	77	77	75	96
1890's	126	149	138	133	135	145	167	166	152	156
1900's	174	190	243	275	320	369	347	455	488	502
1910's	574	604	609	681	728	770	822	919	920	1,037
1920's	1,210	1,294	1,527	2,007	1,951	1,700	2,112	2,469	2,463	2,760
1930's	2,460	2,332	2,145	2,481	2,488	2,723	3,001	3,500	3,324	3,464
1940's	4,107	3,847	3,796	4,125	4,584	4,695	4,749	5,088	5,520	5,046
1950's	5,407	6,158	6,256	6,458	6,342	6,807	7,151	7,170	6,710	7,054
1960's	7,035	7,183	7,332	7,542	7,614	7,804	8,295	8,810	9,096	9,238
1970's	9,637	9,463	9,441	9,208	8,774	8,375	8,132	8,245	8,707	8,552
1980's	8,597	8,572	8,649	8,688	8,879	8,971	8,680	8,349	8,140	7,613
1990's	7,355	7,417	7,171	6,847	6,662	6,560	6,465	6,452	6,252	5,881
2000's	5,822	5,801	5,746	5,681	5,419	5,178	5,102	5,103

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

---

On the other hand, oil imports in the USA are up:

U.S. Crude Oil and Petroleum Products Imports from All Countries (Thousand Barrels per Day)

11.8 % up since 2001- 2007 (Bush years) 11.5 % up from 1994- 2000 (Clinton years) (23% up since the last two presidents were in office)

Decade	Year-0	Year-1	Year-2	Year-3	Year-4	Year-5	Year-6	Year-7	Year-8	Year-9
1970's				6,256	6,112	6,056	7,313	8,807	8,363	8,456
1980's	6,909	5,996	5,113	5,051	5,437	5,067	6,224	6,678	7,402	8,061
1990's	8,018	7,627	7,888	8,620	8,996	8,835	9,478	10,162	10,708	10,852
2000's	11,459	11,871	11,530	12,264	13,145	13,714	13,707	13,439

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

---

The same goes for Gas consumption... (consumption went down 18% during the crisis of the 1980s, then back up) We also see the 1991-1993 economic 1.9% slowdown but then consumption steadily rises 15% by 2007).

U.S. Motor Gasoline Consumption U.S. Crude Oil and Petroleum Products Product Supplied (Thousand Barrels per Day)

Decade Year-0 Year-1 Year-2 Year-3 Year-4 Year-5 Year-6 Year-7 Year-8 Year-9 1970's 17,308 16,653 16,322 17,461 18,431 18,847 18,513 1980's 17,056 16,058 15,296 15,231 15,726 15,726 16,281 16,665 17,283 17,325 1990's 16,988 16,714 17,033 17,237 17,718 17,725 18,309 18,620 18,917 19,519 2000's 19,701 19,649 19,761 20,034 20,731 20,802 20,687 20,698

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

---

Oil_price_increases_of_2004-2006

If we have another economic slowdown in 2008 twice as bad as 1991, the increased consumption from 1994 is still a 12.2% increase. This does not take into account global projection expected to rise 37% in the next 22 years including China, expected to import four times as much oil in 20 years from now:

Next, let's take a look at the gas prices:

(up 25% in one year) Click on image to enlarge

---

Ouch... with global energy demand expected to rise from 85,000,000 barrels a day to 116,000,000 barrels by 2030 (double the population of 1980) and even with the 90 billion more barrels possibility from the defrosting arctic (a four year 85,000,000 per day global supply from the most expensive and difficult place on earth to extract oil, not to mention bad for the environment) this does not add up.

I have some advice....

Invest all your money into fuel efficiency devices now....

Energy prices are going to go up and once they go really high, fuel efficient products (solar and wind and electric cars) are also going to get pricey. Energy saving products will become the next gold. Now is the time to invest before the shit hits the [fossil fuel powered] fan!


Source borrowed from: http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html





(If you are wondering who supplies all the oil to the US, here is the list)

	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
All Countries	9,140	9,665	10,088	10,126	10,118	10,017
Persian Gulf	2,213	2,425	2,400	2,207	2,160	2,123
OPEC*	4,083	4,578	5,042	4,816	4,783	5,394
Algeria	30	112	215	228	362	443
Angola	321	363	306	456	513	496
Ecuador	100	139	232	276	272	198
Indonesia	50	26	34	19	16	15
Iran
Iraq	459	481	655	527	553	485
Kuwait	216	208	241	227	179	176
Libya			18	44	66	84
Nigeria	589	832	1,078	1,077	1,037	1,082
Qatar	9	0	4		1
Saudi Arabia	1,519	1,726	1,495	1,445	1,423	1,453
United Arab Emirates	10	10	5	9	5	9
Venezuela	1,201	1,183	1,297	1,241	1,142	1,150
Non OPEC*	5,058	5,087	5,046	5,310	5,335	4,623
Argentina	70	54	59	56	29	33
Australia	51	27	21	10	5	2
Azerbaijan	0				27	57
Bahamas
Bahrain
Belarus					2
Belize					1	1
Benin
Bolivia			1	1	2	3
Brazil	58	50	51	94	133	167
Brunei	10	28	15	14	17	11
Cameroon	12	12	18	3	2	26
Canada	1,445	1,549	1,616	1,633	1,802	1,864
Chad		3	57	74	95	77
Chile
China	20	13	14	24	19	6
Colombia	235	166	142	156	141	137
Congo (Brazzaville)	23	27	8	25	27	62
Congo (Kinshasa)	3	2	14	2		1
Denmark	3	10	2
Egypt				4	0	1
Equatorial Guinea	39	59	66	68	57	55
Estonia
Gabon	143	131	142	127	60	63
Georgia, Republic of
Germany			0
Guatemala	23	22	18	11	15	11
Guinea	1	1
Italy
Ivory Coast	4	4	5	20	4	0
Kazakhstan			9	12	4	9
Kyrgyzstan
Malaysia	9	21	18	10	7	1
Mauritania					3	3
Mexico	1,500	1,569	1,598	1,556	1,577	1,410
Netherlands			0
Netherlands Antilles			0
New Zealand
Norway	348	181	143	119	98	56
Oman	17	35	10	22	35	32
Papua New Guinea	4	2
Peru	10	8	1	4	4	5
Puerto Rico
Russia	85	151	158	199	108	112
Singapore				1	1
South Africa					3	7
Spain
Sweden
Syria	2	5	1		5	2
Thailand	2	2	1	2	7	14
Trinidad and Tobago	68	67	49	64	67	48
Tunisia					1	6
United Kingdom	405	359	238	224	130	102
Vietnam	20	25	25	31	42	31
Virgin Islands (U.S.)
Yemen	27	5	4	12	20	13