New sources of oil coming

How many times have we heard about the dangers of American dependence on Middle Eastern oil? Well, prepare yourself for a few statistical surprises. The latest figures from the U.S. government’s Energy Information Administration are quite interesting. Those figures show that in January of this year, 74 percent of our oil imports came from just five countries, the same countries that were our top sources of foreign oil throughout 2005.

Granted, there’s no surprise in learning that three quarters of our foreign-produced oil comes from just a few suppliers, but would you care to guess which countries are in that top-five list? Let’s start at the bottom and work up. Last year we brought in almost 419 million barrels from Nigeria, and 450 million from Venezuela. Number three fits our common understanding – the “oil rich sheiks” of Saudi Arabia sold us 556 million barrels of crude. But number two starts to skew our stereotypes. In 2005, the U.S. imported just over 600 million barrels from Mexico. Sitting at that number one spot, where it has been for a number of years, comes that vast repository of petroleum wealth

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