Amazing Stat: California Uses More Gas than China

[L.Wood]

Given all the news coverage about the rise of the Chinese economy, you could be forgiven for thinking that the world's most populous country is hogging all the world's resources, while the developed nations are fighting for scraps.

But, at least with transportation fuel, you'd be wrong. California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (except the US as a whole, of course). That means California's 20 billion gallon gasoline and diesel habit is greater than China's! (Or Russia's. Or India's. Or Brazil's. Or Germany's.)

Wired Science

[L.Wood]

Additional California oil news:

Remember how Jed Clampett and his family struck "black gold" and moved to Beverly Hills? Today the black gold is IN Beverly Hills.

Beverly Hills is one of the most fertile oil fields in Los Angeles, producing nearly a million barrels a year. Many wells are camouflaged or hidden inside buildings. One on the property of Beverly Hills High School is covered in quilt-like floral blankets.

Not far from here, in Wilmington, they churn out far more oil — in fact, the Department of Energy calls Wilmington the third largest oil field in the 48 contiguous states. Who knew?

Most of California's oil comes from the central part of the state (think Daniel Day Lewis in "There Will Be Blood"), but with oil prices so high, all over Los Angeles people are digging, or restarting, wells — even ones that only turn out 10 barrels a day. The state turns out 660,000 barrels a day, but that's down nearly half from the peak in 1985.

Still, conservative estimates are that California is sitting on three billion barrels of accessible oil. Talk about a gold rush.

In Los Angeles, there are three challenges: The fields are old, there's too much urban sprawl to drill easily, and there's a lack of rigs and crews. Also, the oil here is much heavier than the stuff they pull out of west Texas, meaning it's less profitable.

MSNBC Story July. 18, 2008

[Dardedar]

Beverly Hills is one of the most fertile oil fields in Los Angeles, producing nearly a million barrels a year.

DAR
Cool. Just think, the US uses almost a million barrels of oil, per hour, 24 hours a day.

...all over Los Angeles people are digging, or restarting, wells — even ones that only turn out 10 barrels a day.

DAR
I wish I had one of those. 10 x $130 per day = $39,000 per month (minus cost of extraction).

And here is something else to consider. US military petroleum use:

***
The US military oil consumption

“Military fuel consumption for aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities makes the DoD the single largest consumer of petroleum in the U.S” [2]

According to the US Defense Energy Support Center Fact Book 2004, in Fiscal Year 2004, the US military fuel consumption increased to 144 million barrels. This is about 40 million barrels more than the average peacetime military usage.

By the way, 144 million barrels makes 395 000 barrels per day, almost as much as daily energy consumption of Greece.

The US military is the biggest purchaser of oil in the world.

In 1999 Almanac edition of the Defense Logistic Agency’s news magazine Dimensions it was stated that the DESC “purchases more light refined petroleum product than any other single organization or country in the world. With a $3.5 billion annual budget, DESC procures nearly 100 million barrels of petroleum products each year. That's enough fuel for 1,000 cars to drive around the world 4,620 times.”

That budget increased a lot over the years. The US DoD spent $8.2 billion on energy in fiscal year 2004.

“In fiscal 2005, DESC will buy about 128 million barrels of fuel at a cost of $8.5 billion, and Jet fuel constitutes nearly 70 percent of DoD's petroleum product purchases.” says American Forces Information Service News Article by G. J. Gilmore. [3]

For some, this is not enough though. Here is what a report from Office of Under Secretary of Defense says “Because DOD’s consumption of oil represents the highest priority of all uses, there will be no fundamental limits to DOD’s fuel supply for many, many decades.” [4]

American GI is the most energy-consuming soldier ever seen on the field of war

“The Army calculated that it would burn 40 million gallons of fuel in three weeks of combat in Iraq, an amount equivalent to the gasoline consumed by all Allied armies combined during the four years of World War I.” [1]

In May 2005 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Robert Bryce gives another example; “The Third Army (of General Patton) had about 400,000 men and used about 400,000 gallons of gasoline a day. Today the Pentagon has about a third that number of troops in Iraq yet they use more than four times as much fuel.”

More here

D.