The Oil Drum: DOE US Oil Demand by Product %

I know we’ve heard and written here a million times before that transportation accounts for nearly 70% of our national oil consumption, and this image really hits that home.
The posting of this image was prompted by a discussion of whether it might be easier to ask people to turn their thermostats down a degree or two than to ask them to stop driving so much. I noted that it could theoretically be easier to do that (not sure), but we’d get a lot more bang for our buck if we really did target transportation. Besides, as fatbear pointed out, heating oil really is non-negotiable. We can’t have old people dying in order to draw out the peak. (Note: The character who died because she couldn’t afford to heat her apartment in Oil Storm was one of the more memorable storylines.) In this graph, as far as I can tell, residential and commercial heating oil is represented by the white bar in the distillate category. Overall, that’s not very much, especially compared to the giant blue bar in motor gasoline.

Much more after the jump at the brand spankin’ new digs of The Oil Drum.