Friday, November 21, 2008

Oil Sources by Region

This surprised me...


Source: Jon Udelt via The Big Picture

5 comments:

  1. Great chart. Not enough people are aware of this. Most people think we get almost all our oil from the middle east. We get more from Canada than we do the Middle East. Would be interesting to see how this has changed over time though, which might really explain our interest over there.

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  2. Good Chart. Dispels conventional beliefs.

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  3. Dont understand this chart.

    Do you mean where US oil is sourced? Or total oil supply in the ground? Total oil production? Total US imports?

    I'm assuming you mean total US imports (it generally fits), but the lack of clarity is a bit startling.

    Also, oil is a global commodity, so price is set by those who have extra production capacity, almost all of which is in the middle east at this point...

    Again, the graph is interesting, but it's really hard to tell what it's trying to tell us....

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  4. Jake - Dom here - this is US imports. since oil a global commodity this has nothing to do with the actual price of oil or who the true 'sources of oil' are. Were the Saudi's to stop providing oil it doesn't mean our prices would still not sky rocket.

    Also since oil is priced in dollars it does not appropriately describe where the USD goes.

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  5. @Mako - oil price isn't necessarily set by those producing, it's set by 2 worldwide oil bourses (one in london and one in nyc). Iran recently started a third, trying to push for oil to be priced in other currencies than the USD. Coincidentally, the more successful Iran's oil bourse becomes, the more talk we hear about how dangerous the country is...

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