US Energy Dependence - 6(ish) Month Update

Even though the US EIA is currently shuttered, its website is still accessible.

I thought it would be a good time to update the two graphs from March garnered so much interest.  The first graph was the chart with the misleading axes that gave the impression that the US extracts more oil than we collectively burn.

An additional seven months of data are currently available (through July 2013), and this is what the chart would look like now if the new data are included:

Imports have apparently disappeared completely, and since the Field Production line is so far above the consumption line, the US must once again be an oil exporter.  At least that's what CNBC would have you believe if they republished this graph.  The reality hasn't changed a whole lot.

Yes, the US is extracting more oil than we're importing, by a little bit.  This is an important trend, since the last time the US was extracting more oil than importing was 1993 (20 years ago this month, if my 12-month moving average chart is to be believed). The vertical axis is in million barrels per day, as with the rest of the graphs.

This chart raised an interesting question for me.  If the US is back to 50-50 domestic versus imported petroleum, how close are we today to petroleum consumption levels of the last time we were at that same domestic/import ratio?  All I had to do was to add two columns to find out just how much actual oil the US has been able to access, which conveniently leaves out that pesky "refinery gain" and ignores ethanol blending (which energetically speaking is pretty much a wash anyhow).  The graph, which I've not seen before, looks like this:

Now this chart does not address exports of refined products, just like it ignores refinery gain, natural gas plant liquids, ethanol, and used vegetable oil that powers a token number of hippie-mobiles.  US exports of crude oil have been consistently small enough to be reasonably neglected.  What this chart shows is that the US has been on an oil availability plateau since late 1997.  Also, despite throwing massive amounts of capital at drilling companies, paying three times the price per barrel and per gallon of oil and its major products, launching 2 major wars in the Middle East, and designating several large areas of the country as energy sacrifice zones to facilitate major oil extraction efforts, the US has still not gotten above the roughly 15 million barrels per day ceiling that we first faced in 1979.

Before we can talk about what that means for overall energy availability and consumption trends in the US (often called "quality of life" by people who equate burning more oil with a higher quality life), we have to look at population.  I pulled the decadal census data off of wikipedia and made a quick and dirty linear interpolation of it, mostly because I'm lazy enough not to want to back out exponential growth rates for an exercise this quick.  Also, I extrapolated the 2000-2010 growth rate through July of 2013, due to a lack of official data and to save time.  Perhaps I'll work up a more vigorous US population chart another time...  Anyhow, here's the chart:

Something I've always wanted to see, but haven't looked hard enough to find, was a trend of US oil consumption/availability per capita.  Now, this chart is riddled with asterisks, as it's a compilation of the above charts of population and the imports + field production (ignoring refinery gain, refined products exports, ethanol, etc.), but it's as close as I've seen to a historic representation of US consumption patterns.  Notable is the peak in 1979 and the set of declining plateaus since. 

Anyhow, one last chart before I go.  This one is a recreation of Kunstler's US oil production history graph, complete with 12-month moving averages to smooth it out, extended to include the latest data through July 2013.  The third peak on the far right hand side looks more significant today than it did last winter.  Whether the oil industry can keep up the flow of capital needed to coax oil out of formations like the Bakken remains to be seen.