Need help with some simple, easy to grasp gasoline/oil statistics

From http://priuschat.com/forums/other-c...fuel-economy-standards-50-mpg-poll-finds.html

Oil: Crude and Petroleum Products - Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy has dependence on net petroleum imports stats (click on the blue text under the supply column to see historical data). Also look at US daily oil use vs. world oil production.

http://priuschat.com/forums/freds-house-pancakes/90757-remembering-1973-oil-crisis.html and look at the above for how much foreign oil we depended on, at the time vs. now.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2178rank.html - proven oil reserve sizes

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html for our population (~313 million out of 7 billion, putting us at ~4.4% population while consuming ~22% of the world's daily oil production)

http://www.eia.gov/cabs/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/Full.html - look at the Strait of Hormuz and Iran being able to stop shipments thru there by firing at tankers or setting mines

Lookup conversations w/James Woolsey, former CIA director. Google for stuff like woolsey cia foreign oil national security.

EIA's Energy in Brief: Who are the major players supplying the world oil market?

Oil is currently at ~$94/barrel. Using the stats I gave above, that's about $883 million/day flowing out of the country or almost $6.2 billion/week or ~$321 billion/year. The record high oil price was around $145-147/barrel, IIRC.

http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-h...ars-patriotic-vice-admiral-dennis-mcginn.html

 

If your organization is required (or just wants) to be LEED certified, here are the LEED options for that.

LEED NC 2009 SSc4.3 Alternative Transportation

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_in_Energy_and_Environmental_Design]Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

Look at two recent books from the Rocky Mountain Institute:

1. Winning the Oil End Game
2. Reinventing Fire

These are well thought out, in detail, and emphasize cost effective efficiency and conservation.

Information is also available on the Rocky Mountain Institute web site. These will address most questions that will arise.

 

Do you know your audience?

You say it "appears they are interested in doing this"...which means installing electric car chargers in the parking lot.

But what do they want to hear from you? In my interaction with people, as far as the specific topic of Oil and Oil Dependency, opinions are pretty polarized. Those that place an importance on freeing ourselves from dependency on foreign oil, will place an importance on that issue. Those that do not? Simply will not.

It's microcosm, macrocosm but I'd hesitate to get too preachy. From your audiences P.O.V. they are probably more focused on the direct utility of having electric car chargers available in your parking lot, and perhaps the cost effectiveness.

I'd go in, with statistics about how many employee's would benefit...and how having chargers available will and could benefit the company.

If nobody currently owns an electric? If there are no plans for the company to own and operate electric vehicles...then you have your work cut out for you.

It's not that people shouldn't continue to learn, it's not that everyone, including myself highly- shouldn't strive to keep an open mind about how everything interlocks...but it's just that if the goal is Parking Lot charging stations? You might even lose some audience or credibility if you approach their obtainment as needed because of dependency of foreign oil from unfriendly countries. Especially if those in charge of giving you the authority are driving SUV's and they might like to park upfront where you want to put the charging stations.

So my "mind my own business" advice? Know your audience, AND focus primarily on the immediate and longterm benefits to the company directly. If they are open to the idea? Then it won't take a big picture pitch that includes the global impact. IMO people either embrace the message or they do not, and I'd be doubtful that the decision to dedicate X amount of parking spaces and X amount of resources to buying and maintaining vehicle chargers would hinge in any way but passingly to the realities of dependency of foreign oil.

And before everyone jumps on me? Yes, I believe reducing our dependency on foreign oil, noble, imperative, correct and eventually inevitable. I'm just too cynical to think it the best arguement to use to justify vehicle chargers. I'm assuming you have to sway the accountant before the idealist. Sad but often true.

Good Luck.

 

A statistic I keep reminding people of in other forums: 60% of our trade deficit is for our petroleum habit. Forget about Chinese imports or foreign automakers, the real culprit of our trade deficit is oil. (The number could be 55%, depending on recent oil prices, 60% was last July: Trade Deficit of U.S. Unexpectedly Surges on Increase in Crude-Oil Imports - Bloomberg)
Fracking is increasing our usable oil supply (particularly in the Bakken field in North Dakota), but it's still not enough to make a sizable difference in our reliance on imports.

Here's an interesting article (from the WSJ, no less, but it is just a blog) saying oil prices affect our GDP more than we think: Petroleum Imports Hold Back GDP - Real Time Economics - WSJ I'm convinced our economic boom in the 90's was from cheap oil and our current malaise is from high oil prices (housing bubble was a side affect that is most visible, so people focus blame on that even though house prices declined for 2 years before the oil peaked and subsequent economic collapse).

That's essentially true. We import about 10.1 million barrels of petroleum per day (this includes "unconventional oils" from Canada's and Venezuela's tar sands). Of that, 62% is from OPEC. Of our crude oil that the U.S. consumes, 60% is imported, so .6*.62 = 37% of our oil that we use (approximately) is from OPEC.
However, each barrel of oil is distilled into different parts, you can't distill one barrel into gasoline, another barrel into jet fuel, etc. as desired. So trying to connect the 40% from OPEC to the 40% made into gasoline is kind of stretching it. Actually 46% of a barrel of oil is made into gasoline.

26% of a barrel goes into diesel, 9% jet fuel, and other products (including asphalt, heating oil, kerosene and plastic) come from the remainder. Some people seem to think plastic is a big part of the use of oil, but it's really a very small part.
This Week In Petroleum Crude Oil Section
File:Usesofpetroleum.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/energy/energy_archive/energy_flow_2010/LLNLUSEnergy2010.png

That would be my first chart.

The next chart would be ALL the electric vehicles and Plug In Hybrids being deployed in the next three years (Toyota Plug-In-Prius, Volt, Leaf, Tesla Model S, Mitsubishi MiEV, Ford Focus EV, etc.)

The third chart would show how profitable this could be by showing how recharging stations expand the number of available users (e.g. Work Charger available => EV commuting range doubled => Number of EV users willing to pay goes up by factor of 4). Specifically, I would overlay a 20 and 50 nm circle over a google earth picture with the parking lot location in the center. Without the charging stations, only EV drivers in the inner circle would use the parking lot. With the charging stations, the 50 mile circle EV users would be very likely, if not required, to use the stations.

 

The amount of petroleum used for transportation shown in the chart is pretty close to what Petroleum (Oil) | Institute for Energy Research says:

 

Sorry, I had to put that together in a hurry. From the links I provided, you can mention, we currently consume ~19.1 million barrels of oil today (higher when the economy's better) and import ~49% of oil (also higher when the economy's better). When had oil crises in the 70s (some stories at http://priuschat.com/forums/freds-house-pancakes/90757-remembering-1973-oil-crisis.html#post1276469). During one of them, in 1973, we had net imports of only 34.8%.

Our domestic oil consumption makes up ~22% of the world's daily oil production while we only have ~4.4% of the world's population population (w/~313 million people) . China has 1.3 billion people w/a growing middle class (somewhere between 70-300 million people) w/more of them being able to afford cars. India has 1.19 billion people also w/a growing middle class. As time goes on, there will be more competition from developing nations, such as these for a limited supply of oil, a non-renewable resource.

China is now the world's largest auto market (News Headlines) and the world's second largest economy (China Officially World's Second-Biggest Economy - EconWatch - CBS News). China's doesn't seem to have apprehension into going into certain regions for oil that the US disallows/has sanctions on (e.g. Sudan China beating U.S. to South Sudan oil market).

 

I'd think about the barriers your audience might face regarding the installation of charging facilities. Then address those barriers in your presentation.

You might provide a ton of info on energy independence, whey these folks are a set of completely different issues.

 

Must... resist... my... evil... HR... Director... argument...

 

Your 40% OPEC figure is correct for March_2011 per T Boone Pickens below. Your second sentence might be approximately correct (~40% of USA refinery output is gaso) but it weakens your argument, because so what? We need the other products too. In other words, stick with T Boone's language. Now then, keep in mind, T Boone is accused of some bias himself (his vested interest is in US/Canada oil/tar sands). I personally would ask, if you use the EPA Power Profiler site to get the %coal in your elec mix, how does it look?

Below Dated: Mar 30, 2011 11:47 PM EDT

 

As long as it makes them feel this will be good for the bottom line, you'll be fine.