Gas Prices Have Drivers Over a Barrel

The U.S. uses 20 million barrels of oil each day, 9.78 million of those barrels are imported. Where does the oil come from and how does the U.S. use it?

According to Opec, on average, the U.S. gets its oil from:

Canada-1.94 million barrels per day

Mexico- 1.1 million barrels per day

Columbia- .25 million barrels per day

Venezuela- .97 million barrels per day

Brazil- .29 million barrels per day

Algeria- .28 million barrels per day

Iraq- .48 million barrels per day

Saudia Arabia- .99 million barrels per day

Nigeria- .77 million barrels per day

Angola- .45 million barrels per day

Seventy percent of the oil used in the U.S. is for transportation.

Many believe that if the U.S. increases its oil production, we would use less foreign oil, therefore the cost of gas would decrease.  However, the oil market is a global market.  According to the Roosevelt Institute, “the idea that drilling for a few billion more barrels in the United States’ already depleted oil zones would have much of an effect on prices is wrong. If you manage to increase the amount of oil produced in the US, most of that oil will actually go to other countries because the oil market is global. The US uses about 21 percent of the world’s oil supply and produces about 8 percent. This means that we can’t buy our oil in an America-only market. (See figures from the BP Energy Review.)

According the the CIA World Factbook, the U.S. is the third highest oil producing company.

Many economists agree, that if the U.S. did produce more of its own oil, the cost of gasoline would not decline more than a few cents per gallon.  Economists and environmentalists both agree that the best way to insure the cost of oil would go down, would be to regulate oil speculation and cutting back on our consumption.

Some members of congress are working to regulate oil speculation, but in the meantime, it looks as though we are suck with high gas prices for the foreseeable future.