 Oil Facts
- The price of a barrel of oil has increased roughly fivefold since the winter of 1998.
- Washington, Oregon, and Idaho combined use about 250 million barrels of oil every year.
- At current prices (link to Anchorage Daily News; registration may be required), our oil consumption habits will siphon off about $14 billion from the combined economies of the three states, which is about one out of every 30 dollars generated in the region. And, obviously, the more money that leaves the region to pay for oil, the less is left to circulate among local businesses and residents. http://cascadiascorecard.typepad.com/blog/2005/06/oil_rising_to_t.html
- The United States has 5% of the world's population and uses 25% of the world's oil.
- The U.S is 60% dependent on foreign oil.
- 97% of our transportation sector is dependent on oil.
- The U.S. imports 12 million barrels a day, heading for 20 million barrels a day by 2025.
- We will send oil producers an additional $50 billion this year--on top of the $120 billion we sent last year due to price increases over the past year.
- We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a military presence to protect Middle East energy sources.
- China and India are both seeing rapid economic growth. The use of oil by China alone has increased to almost 6 million barrels per day. China’s demand has tripled since 1990 and it is now a net importer of oil.
- Ever since 1980 Saudi Arabia has used its spare capacity on a routine basis to smooth out bumps in global oil supply, keeping the world economy on a relatively even keel. For a quarter of a century, Saudi Arabia has been the key swing producer on the world oil stage... Current world demand for oil is about 84 million barrels per day, and current world production capacity is about....84 million barrels per day. As Amy Myers Jaffe points out, OPEC's spare capacity — and thus the world's — has dropped nearly to zero in the past few years. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_06/006413.php
- Our state and our nation must invest in alternative sources of energy that break our dependence on foreign oil, make us more safe and creates millions of new jobs for our ailing economy.
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