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According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States of America has a population of roughly 307.2 million. (July 2009 estimate) (1)

The total population of the world is estimated to be around 6.7 billion based on calculations of the World Bank. (data from 2008) (2)

This means Americans constitue 4.5% of the world’s population.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects global oil consumption in 2010 to grow to 85.2 million barrels per day. (3) With the United States consuming 19,500,000 barrels of oil per day (4), America accounts for roughly 22.9 % of global oil consumption.

When 5% of the world’s population consume almost a quarter of the world’s oil, conflicts are inevitable. Oil is a vital resource for the U.S. economy and  America already depends on foreign oil supplies. This is risky since disruptions in the supply chain would have disastrous impacts on the health of the American economy. A country (such as Iran) that could easily disrupt oil supplies coming from the Persian Gulf by blocking the Strait of Hormuz (through which roughly 40% of seaborne oil shipments pass every day) could hold the U.S. to ransom. Iran is holding hostage a huge share of the world’s oil reserves. The oil facilities of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain are all within reach of Iranian missiles.

According to my calculations (follow this link to see the chart: oil consumption by country), the average American consumes 23.2 barrels of oil per year while the average Chinese consumes only 2.1 barrels per year. In 2010, one American will consume as much oil as 11 Chinese.  What were the consequences if in 15 or 20 years, one Chinese consumed 25% as much oil as an American today? Given that there will be around 1,450 million people in China between 2025 and 2030 (according to a recent report: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/28/content_507307.htm), China’s oil consumption will go through the roof no matter how efficiently they will be using energy by that time…

Without the discovery of several giant oil fields - with extraction costs similar to those in the Saudi Arabian desert - oil prices are prone to skyrocket.

sources:

(1) https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html

(2) http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_pop_totl&tdim=true&q=world+population

(3) http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/contents.html#Global_Crude_Oil_And_Liquid_Fuels

(4) https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2174rank.html

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 1:02 PM and is filed under Economy, Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.