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  • 2002-02-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Can You Avoid Funding the Middle East Through Gasoline Purchases? (en)
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  • An item about a scheme for Americans to avoid purchasing gasoline produced from imported oil has been circulating online in various forms since 2002 and has undergone many revisions in the process. It is now confusing mishmash that can't decide whether it's a plan for informing consumers where to buy gasoline produced in the United States, how to avoid oil companies that import crude from Saudi Arabia, how to avoid oil companies that import crude from the Middle East, or how to avoid oil companies that import crude from OPEC countries (many of which are not Middle Eastern): The most important fact to note about this item is that it contained many gross statistical errors, exhibited a severely flawed grasp of oil industry economics at the time it was originally written, and it has only become worse over time. One of the misleading messages implicit in this text is the suggestion that most of the USA's crude oil is imported from the Middle East. It isn't. According to recent figures regarding crude oil imports, in October 2017 only 15% of the USA's crude oil imports came from countries classified by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as Persian Gulf exporters (i.e., Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates). A list of the top eight countries supplying crude oil (measured in thousands of barrels per month) to the USA in October 2017 includes only two Middle Eastern countries: Canada: 102,720Iraq: 21,956Mexico: 19,105Saudi Arabia: 17,442Venezuela: 15,823Nigeria: 13,344Colombia: 7,676Brazil: 6,707 Moving along, we find that many of the statistics offered in the piece quoted above are erroneous or outdated: This information is quite outdated. In January 2012 the top five companies importing oil from the Persian Gulf were as follows: Exxon Mobil: 14,194,000 barrels Valero: 12,619,000 barrels Chevron: 9,243,000 barrels Motiva Enterprises (Shell): 8,942,000 barrels Marathon: 6,080,000 barrelsIn January 2012, the U.S. imported a total of 119,620,000 barrels of crude oil from OPEC countries (Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela). That works out to an average of 3.9 million barrels of crude oil per day.Some of these figures are way off the mark. According to DOE figures, in January 2012 the above-listed companies imported oil from Middle Eastern countries in the following quantities: Valero: 12,619,000 barrels BP North America: 3,161,000 barrels ConocoPhillips: 1,470,000 barrels ARCO (BP West Coast Products): 875,000 barrels Sunoco: 0 barrels Sinclair: 0 barrels Hess: 0 barrels Maverick: 0 barrels Flying J: 0 barrels Murphy Oil: 0 barrels Even these figures are problematic, however, for a number of reasons: Other articles about gasoline prices: Last updated: 4 April 2012 (en)
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