326. DETAILED BREAKDOWN OF U.S. PETROLEUM USE
Thus far, I've only been aware of one detailed breakdown of fuel usage in the U.S. -- the DOE breakdown cited in the Hirsch report, and described in 27. WHERE DOES ALL THE OIL GO?.
However, I recently ran across a cite to another Table at the Oil Drum (unfortunately I didn't take a note of the poster's name. Hat tip in any case!) . This Table is found in a document called Ending the Oil Age: A Plan to Kick the Saudi Habit(pdf) by Charles Komanoff, and goes into considerably more detail than the Table in the Hirsch report.
Apparently the data comes from an internal DOE spreadsheet:
The spreadsheet from which we calculated Table 1 (Major Uses of Petroleum Products in the United States, 2000) and otherwise estimated the amounts and types of petroleum used in the U.S. prior to last Sept. 11 is an extensive (15 columns by 2679 rows) compilation of both oil usage and transportation energy developed by the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Energy Information Administration for forecasting purposes. We obtained the spreadsheet from a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency staff member in December, 2001 and performed the calculations for this report during that month. While the spreadsheet itself is not available from DOE, the data in it are contained in the downloadable files listed below. Our 2000 figures are normalized (e.g., for weather) and may differ slightly from actual data. We will do our best to provide copies of the spreadsheet itself upon request.This Table is a thought-provoking resource which I wanted to post for future reference.
by JD
posted by JD @ 4:14 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Barrels/day has to be the worst unit ever. The day is just not a very useful unit because daily production and consumption vary throughout the year. I would guess that the per day number is actually calculated by taking annual production or consumption and dividing it by 365 (or perhaps 265.25 or maybe even 365.2425). Let's just stick with annual.
The barrel is also poor unit. It is 42 gallons. It is not an SI unit, nor is it easy to relate to other units mathematically. I would urge use of the cubic meter (m^3) instead. One m^3 ~= 6.3 bbl.
1 bbl/day = ~58 m^3/yr.
However it would be far better to state all of the units in the form of energy equivalents. Natural Gas is often sold in btus. The SI unit kJ should be used instead because the btu is poorly defined. There are six different values of the btu that range between 1.054 and 1.056 kJ.
This is very interesting and I will keep this in mind. Incredible how much we use here in the States just to drive. I imagine if we were to have say 60 percent of America on cars that got 40-60 mpg that would slash our imports by quite a bit. I't's good to see that farming and things like plastics and medicines don't tak up too much of that chart because those things are what is most important to us. One may argue that plastics are not important, however they are in a medical sense. If all the cars in the U.S. were as effiecent as the Volt claims to be We would We could cut down to about 3 mbd. I'm only taking a stab at it though.
Great information. I live in Japan now and don't drive at all though I am still working. When I lived in California, I used to drive 45 miles each way to work, and thought nothing of it. I can't fathom doing that now. I tell my friends and relatives back home I will not move back to the States unless I can do all the basics without a car - ie, work, shop, basic entertainment. Sadly, the state of public transportation in most of America is worse than in many 3rd world countries. The solution is not higher MPG, or even alternative fuels - the solution is for the average working American to break free of the need of a personal transporation device.
Slashing oil use is important and transportation is a big one. The way I see it, it is ridiculous to compare a dense country like Japan to the USA. Cars will always be the reality here, now with that being said our public transit sucks and in dense places it is much more efficient to have good mass transit, especially at rush hour. Mass transit is part of the solution. Another part is the ~13% of fuel used for truck transit, trains are far more efficient at moving goods long distances it is about time we reduce long haul trucking and it becomes the "Last Mile" solution. We could save quite a bit of oil there as well. Than we need to eliminate the ~2% that is used for power plants, it is an inefficient use of oil, lets work on solar power and better nukes. Than how about a real biofuels program, not food based but cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel from algae. Increasing the blend from 10% to 30% saves oil especially if we can generate it from discarded materials. Increasing car gas milage is key as well, how about selling diesel cars in the USA! Also we need to slow population growth as it clearly exacerbates the problem, the earth is past carrying capacity.
So if we were to get more fuel efficient cars(hybrids and diesel), drive less(take transit more esp. at rush hour, car pool,live closer to WORK!), work one day a week from home, increase our use of sustainable biofuels from 10% to 30% of road fuel, eliminate oil fueled power plants, cut of dubious consumption of goods, and use trains for long haul goods transit we could be using less oil per capita than place like italy or japan. In fact we could cut our use by a sizable margin, probably half our imports.
So for all this government nonsense we really are doing nothing to improve the situation, when part of the solution is right in front of us.
Biofuels are not the way forward. They take up a huge amount of arable land that could otherwise be used for food crops etc...
From the table of year 2000, it looks like 76.7% of our consumption can be converted to NG. The rest, 22.4%(Total in the table is 99.1%,not 100) or roughly 4.7 million barrels per day can be met by domestic production. This means it IS possible to stop oil imports by switching every possible usage to NG. We should set a goal of accomplishing this in 10 years, like a new moon project that can avoid sending abroad roughly $400 billion at todays (June 2010)prices of $75/Barrel). This could go up to $800Billions if the oil goes up to $147/Barrel like it did once! All we need is a determined goverment/politicians to set the goal and lead the industry/people to make it happen. Where are they???
Is it too late to post a comment? That person in Japan might want to consider New York City, unique among American cities in that fewer than half of residents own a vehicle. Why do they need to with an extensive transit network, also parking is a pain. It is clear that Petroleum is mainly a transportation fuel, and that rail passenger use does not even make the chart tells you how little we have of that. I agree with Pickens that more trucks should be converted to NG and maybe passenger cars. Unless we can greatly increase production here.
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