Peak Oil is You
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Page added on May 11, 2013
How oil travels around the world, in one map
Here’s a neat map looking at how oil travels by sea around the globe — focusing on the key “choke points” where that oil supply is most vulnerable to attack:
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
That map comes from this recent reporting project on U.S. energy security by nine student journalists at the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative. The Web site is really worth a look — the reporters explored all aspects of energy security, from presidential rhetoric on the subject to the oil markets themselves to a breakdown of U.S. military operations to stabilize the oil supply. And the site has plenty of charts and graphs.
To accompany the map above, Dana Ballout has a piece looking in more detail at all the potential oil choke points — particularly the Strait of Hormuz, where 17 million barrels of oil pass through each day, or one-fifth of the world’s supply. That includes this eye-opening figure:
Protecting oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage off the coast of Iran and the United Arab Emirates, is one of the critical missions of the Navy here. It is also expensive. By some estimates, the United States has spent as much as $8 trillion on maintaining such a menacing military presence in the region in recent decades, including aircraft carrier groups bristling with jet fighters, to make sure countries like Iran don’t choke off the world’s oil supply.
Roger Stern, a professor at the University of Tulsa National Energy Policy Institute, came up with the $8 trillion calculation in a 2010 study published in the Energy Policy Journal. He concluded that the U.S. has spent that sum on protecting oil resources in Persian Gulf since 1976, when it first began increasing its military presence in the region following the first Arab oil embargo.
Estimates of the actual cost vary. According to a 2009 study by the RAND Corporation, there is no official public U.S. accounting of the costs of protecting U.S. oil interests in the Persian Gulf or elsewhere. However, others like Stern have come up with numbers ranging from $13 billion to $143 billion per year.
Check out the whole reporting project here.
19 Comments on "How oil travels around the world, in one map"
Kenz300 on Sat, 11th May 2013 10:11 pm
We are too dependent on oil for transportation fuel.
We need to diversify our sources and types of fuels.
The more electric, flex-fuel, hybrid, biofuel, CNG, LNG and hydrogen fueled vehicles we add to the mix the better.
Ending Our Oil Addiction: Yossie Hollander at TEDxChapmanU – YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKEtQ_zz4GA
DC on Sun, 12th May 2013 2:01 am
More shyt. Just who, exactly, is the US navy ‘protecting’ that oil from? No one ever really brings that question up, however, Iran is constantly invoked, along with vague terms like radical muslims. One could say, ‘pirates’ offer some degree of justification. But the idea that the US is there to ‘protect’ oil makes one ask immediately, from who exactly? Only a moron would suggest Iran, so the real reason the US corporate military is there in such force must have little to do with protection. The US navy does not protect or guard ships hauling Hondas or sony DVD players to North America, and when you consider the US only buys about 1/5th of its direct oil needs from the ME, again, one cant help but ask, why are they really there?
If those oil satraps are making so much money from oil, and if oil were actually a freely traded commodity between willing partners on equal terms, there would be little need for all those nuke-powered aircraft carriers the US loves to park there. The oil satraps, were they independent, could provide any minimal ‘security’ needed. Clearly the fact that so much firepower is needed to allegedly ‘protect’ those so-called ‘choke’ points, means that the fundamental nature of the oil trade is far different from what most people think it is.
BillT on Sun, 12th May 2013 5:53 am
The Middle East had far too many independent sovereign countries not under the thumb of the banksters and their puppet governments, the US and GB. Iran and Venezuela are two of the few that are left. I wonder how many aircraft carriers it would take to keep an Iranian missile barrage from sinking a few tankers in the channel of the Strait? Or to protect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia? Or even themselves from the newer, faster missiles in Iran’s arsenal? The game is heating up…pun intended.
GregT on Sun, 12th May 2013 2:46 pm
We are too dependent on the automobile for transportation.
We need to diversify our methods of moving around, and stop adding more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
The LESS electric, flex-fuel, hybrid, biofuel, CNG, LNG and hydrogen fueled vehicles we add to the mix the better. Every last one of them needs a massive fossil fuel input.
Just building and maintaining the roads themselves, require us to continue to be addicted to oil.
Kenz300 on Sun, 12th May 2013 2:50 pm
We need a choice of transportation fuels. We need competition at the pump.
The Truth Behind High Gas Prices, in 60 Seconds – YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KTgodTZ5ow
SteveK on Sun, 12th May 2013 3:49 pm
Complexity costs; more, lower-volume, assembly lines, duplicated fuel- delivery infrastructure, differentiated maintenance infrastructure, etc., and all built and maintained using fossil fuels. We need ubiquitous basic rail and intra-city electric transport services.
GregT on Sun, 12th May 2013 6:35 pm
Kenz,
The result of lower prices at the pump, would be continued exponential economic growth. Continued economic growth translates into faster resource depletion, greater environmental degradation, and increasing population growth.
Oil is a finite, key resource. If we have any hope of building alternate energy and transpiration infrastructures, we will need huge amounts of fossil fuel energy. Cheap gas at the pumps greatly reduces incentives to find alternate solutions, and burns what oil remains even faster.
Not a good plan.
DC on Sun, 12th May 2013 7:50 pm
Kenz subscribes to the myth of ‘competition’. To Kenz, competition is magic, literally. Wave the competition wand, and all problems vanish. Of course, Ken, despite repeated attempts to point out to him every ‘alternative’ he problems is either a) not an alternative at all, or b) is owned by the very oil companies he thinks are being so competition unfriendly.
I love how he keeps saying we ‘need’ competition at the ‘pumps’ notice that? Ken would be happy to keep the pumps, he just wants the illusion of choice. For him, seeing a NG dispenser next to to a gas one is what he calls a ‘solution’.
I for one, dont want ‘competition’, (an impossible goal in any event) at the pumps at the pumps-period. I want the pumps to go away(except for critical needs-not mass commuting to and from suburbia). We need very expensive fossil-fuels, and certainly not more ‘varity’ of them either.
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