Tracking Oil and Energy Prices

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I'm still on this case. My new search uses the phrase "world's largest oil consumer" September 2006 "second largest consumer" all punched into Google. This got lots of good sites, but no verifyable listing of countries showing current production, refining, exporting to where, importing from where, numbers.

I did learn that the USA is Numbah One, around 20 million barrels a day, and China seems to be number two around 8 to 9 million barrels a day. Now we might consider that we cannot get accurate data from the rest of the world, but surely we can pass laws that require the oil companies to release to the government exact daily data on all their information as listed above, supplies on hand, importing, exporting, etc.

In short, we could, by law, force "trade information" out of the companies, handled confidentially, but summarized by the government for the benefit of Congress and the average consumer. Since the US represents such a huge porportion of the world's consumption of oil, having this information would help stablize the market prices, and prevent all the mystic mumbo-jumbo tea leave-reading that economists and politicians currently present to pretend that it is impossible to understand the market. It would also help foresee "Peak Oil." This knowledge is too important to be left to the CEO's of the oil companies.

I went to so many interesting sites that I forget just where this stuff below came from, but if you type in the search terms above, you should be able to find it.

"In 2004, the United States consumed a staggering 20.4 million barrels of oil a day, easily making us the world's largest oil consumer by more than three-fold our closest competitor (China, which, in 2004, consumed 6.5 million barrels of oil a day). Where does the bulk of this money go? Despite their guarantees, there is no credible evidence that either Saudi Arabia or Iran can prevent at least some of this money from falling into the hands of terrorists. But even if they didn't support terrorism, the fact remains that our vast oil consumption would still be supporting two of the most markedly corrupt and draconian regimes on the planet.

Why have States in the Middle East stagnated or regressed politically over the last 50 years while virtually every other region in the world has progressed (most noticeably in Asia and Latin America)? Again, Oil. It is no coincidence that every single State that relies on oil as a primary source of wealth is a dictatorship. The one exception to this is Norway, but they found their democracy far before they found their oil. With the recent hike in oil prices, oil-states are now more empowered than ever. Saudi Arabia has a projected budget surplus of over $26 billion. Meanwhile, they bribe the Wahabi imams, fund medressas, and maintain a massive and brutal police state that regularly violates human rights."

Douglas Keachie