Today, China consumes only a third as much oil as the United States, which burns a quarter of the world’s oil each day. By 2030, India and China together will import as much oil as the United States and Japan do today.
While demand is growing fastest abroad, Americans’ appetite for big cars and large houses has pushed up oil demand steadily in this country, too. Europe has managed to rein in oil consumption through a combination of high gasoline taxes, small cars and efficient public transportation, but Americans have not. Oil consumption in the United States, where gasoline is far cheaper than in Europe, has jumped to 21 million barrels a day this year, from about 17 million barrels in the early 1990s.
If the Chinese and Indians consumed as much oil for each person as Americans do, the world’s oil consumption would be more than 200 million barrels a day, instead of the 85 million barrels it is today. No expert regards that level of production as conceivable.
Rising Demand for Oil Provokes New Energy Crisis (New York Times)
Update: Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth (Washington Post)
But they are a bigger polluter than the US as of a couple of months ago. There are plenty of other ways to burn organic material and China has loads of coal (and oil for that matter). A new energy crisis would probably be good for everyone after the initial shock. As long as we don’t go back to whaling for oil or something.
“Recently, in just nine weeks, oil jumped from $75 to $95 a barrel for little apparent reason.”
He must have been napping when the other newsies were talking about “all options on the table” and bombing Iran. A few other quibbles: the inflation adjusted price is less relevant than the cost of travel as a percentage of income. That’s where the pain is felt. The spot price per barrel is being driven higher by hedging. People buy calls to lock in a price. The sellers of calls buy on the market to hedge the sales of calls. The speculative activity is only partly tied to actual availability. If Dick “Dick” Cheney flew to Tehran and signed a lurve and happiness treaty with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the price would probably drop at least 10 bucks per barrel.
You guys are such Pollyannas. I envision myself someday fashioning crude digging tools out of CDs, perhaps by the light of a squirrel-fat lamp.
All right. I predict “By the Light of a Squirrel-fat Lamp” will be the title of the biggest folk single of 2067,