The crude facts of oil

EVERY day, at a rate of 160,000 litres a second, crude oil gushes from the Good Earth. That’s 13 billion litres every 24 hours, worth about $US11.3 billion ($A11.8 billion) at today’s record prices.

By any measure, the global oil economy is an eye-popping phenomenon. In a single day world oil revenue now matches the annual gross domestic product of Uganda, Paraguay or Jamaica, is more than double the GDP of Nicaragua and countless other battler nations, and is 31 times bigger than the economy of the Solomon Islands.

So it’s not just transport and commuting and holidays that will cost much more. Think downstream processing, think petrochemicals and plastics that use derivatives of oil and other energy sources to produce fertilisers, computer parts, drink bottles and food packaging, car and machine parts, pipes for plumbing, medical and surgical equipment, toys and even surfboards. The cost of making them is about to rise.

The Age