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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated
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From: LindyBill7/1/2008 3:14:26 AM
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US Oil Consumption Falls Back To 2002 Level

For most of the post-WWII era US oil consumption went up year after year. One deviation from that came in the early 1980s. An even longer lasting and probably permanent deviation from that trend is developing. Americans have traveled back in a sort of time machine to 2002 levels of oil usage.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration revised downward U.S. April oil demand by 863,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 19.77 million bpd -- 3.9 percent below year-ago levels. The revision, which showed April demand was the lowest for the month since April 2002, came even before gasoline prices surged to new records in June.

But on a per capita basis the reduction in oil usage is even larger since the US population grows about 1% per year. So has US oil usage per capita gone down 10% since 2002? Can someone check me on this?

Back in 1959 the United States used about 6 million barrels of oil per day. The US had a population of about 132 million in 1959 versus about 304.4 million at the time of this writing. Okay, with 2.3 times more people we would use almost 14 million barrels a day if we used oil at the same rate as in 1950. But we use about 20 million barrels a day. So once prices go high enough to cut US demand by 6 million barrels a day we will have traveled back in time to 1950 in terms of oil usage.

A 1950 level of oil usage will be easier in the future than it was in 1950 because we have much more efficient cars and other higher efficiency equipment. Plus, we have nuclear power plants, wind turbines, and other sources of non-fossil fuels energy. As we hit each point of our future journey into our oil consumption past we will make other gains in technology for fossil fuel replacements. Now, I do not expect those advances to come fast enough to prevent a decline in total per capita energy usage. But those other energy sources will at least allow us to maintain an industrial society.
By Randall Parker at 2008 June 30 11:02 PM Energy Fossil Fuels |
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