[joewp]

It was discussed last week, in this thread : http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic34636.html

[Bas]

The export land model is a typical idealized economic model with lots of assumptions. While still generally true, it doesn't take into account political factors (which most economical models don't do) such as measures to ensure export revenue from oil like we have seen in Iran which we will see replicated in one form or another in other exporting countries if and when their addictive oil export revenues are threatened to dry up. Still, this is an important relationship to take into account.

[PeakingAroundtheCorner]

It was discussed last week, in this thread : http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic34636.html

Crap! Sorry, I didn't notice the date on the article. My bad!

[FreakOil]

There are no contradictions in the above statement. People are not changing their behaviors, they are merely trying to affect a different outcome from their behaviors. --snip-- We will continue to overpopulate and we will continue to consume more resources than can be substainingly provided by our planet.

In that case, it seems the instinct to survive overrides the instinct to mimic. I think there are much more complex mechanisms at work here, though I do not believe in free will.

[Pixie]

This post is in response to a question that was asked in a different thread (Breaking Through) wondering how much oil was used by the top 1 billion consumers. So what I did to get a good estimate of this was,

1) I looked up the top 40 oil consuming nations (2006) at the EIA website: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/topworldtables1_2.htm

2) I looked up their July 2007 populations at the CIA World Fact Book: https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... 9rank.html

3) Put them in a spreadsheet, calculated their per capita oil use, and then sorted them in order of per capita use. These 40 nations use 88% of the oil produced on the planet, so this is a pretty good answer to the question, though it ignores some very small nations and some very poor nations.

Here's the table. Consumption is in barrels per day. Sorry if the formatting is funky:
____Country____consumption___population____per capita
1 Kuwait_______524,045____2,505,559____0.2092
2 Singapore ____796,650____4,553,009____0.1750
3 UAE _______423,072____4,444,011____0.0952
4 Saudi Arabia _2,067,829___27,601,038 ___0.0749
5 USA_______20,587,550__301,139,947____0.0684
6 Canada_____2,217,877___33,390,141____0.0664
7 Netherlands__1,013,175___16,570,613____0.0611
8 Belgium_______556,490___10,392,226____0.0535
9 Australia______920,186___20,434,176_____0.0450
10 Korea, S.____2,157,479___49,044,790_____0.0440
11 Taiwan_______950,192___22,858,872_____0.0416
12 Japan_______5,221,636__127,433,494_____0.0410
13 Greece________434,871___10,706,290_____0.0406
14 Sweden_______363,320____9,031,088_____0.0402
15 Spain________1,583,671___40,448,191____0.0392
16 Austria________301,356____8,199,783____0.0368
17 Germany_____2,629,526___82,400,996____0.0319
18 France ______1,972,132___63,713,926____0.0310
19 UK__________1,816,014___60,776,238____0.0299
20 Italy _______1,709,444___58,147,733____0.0294
21 Portugal_______304,460___10,642,836____0.0286
22 Iran_________1,626,925___65,397,521____0.0249
23 Venezuela______599,191__26,023,528____0.0230
24 Russia________3,103,333_141,377,752____0.0220
25 Malaysia________515,049 24,821,286__0.0208
26 Iraq __________570,058__27,499,638__0.0207
27 Mexico_________2,029,729_108,700,891__0.0187
28 Thailand_________939,974__65,068,149__0.0144
29 Poland___________495,274__38,518,241__0.0129
30 Argentina_________479,975__40,301,927__0.0119
31 South Africa_______519,171__43,997,828__0.0118
32 Brazil___________2,183,161_190,010,647__0.0115
33 Turkey____________618,759__71,158,647__0.0087
34 Egypt_____________600,999__80,335,036__0.0075
35 Ukraine ___________342,902__46,299,862__0.0074
36 China _________7,273,869_1,321,851,888__0.0055
37 Indonesia________1,165,073__234,693,997__0.0050
38 Phillipines__________348,709___91,077,287__0.0038
39 India____________2,533,892_1,129,866,154__0.0022
40 Pakistan___________344,963__164,741,924__0.0021

So, the answer to the question, "How much oil do the top 1 billion consumers use?" is approximately this: The top 22 nations on this list have a total population of just over 1 billion people, and they use 50,177,900 barrels per day, which is almost 60% of production. All 40 nations, by the way, have a population of 4.87 billion, and (once again) they use about 88% of the oil produced in the world.

Using the data sources I did, one could go all the way down the list of 230 nations and figure it all out, if one wanted to spend the time.

[pup55]

Alarmingly, China could quadruple its oil use, putting it above the US in terms of gross consumption, and they would still have a per-capita oil use of about that of Malaysia or Venezuela.

Also, as Cheney has pointed out, it will take the production equivalent of three more Saudi Arabias to get this to happen. This, of course, is why it will never happen.

They are going to be really ticked off when they find out they cannot get enough gas to run their new cars.

Also, if the US cuts its oil usage in half, it will put it on the same level as Germany. Germany is quite a liveable place, people friendly, food good, nothing wrong with their standard of living.

[Lighthouse]

Where is New Zealand?

[Denny]

IF you note, many of the oil producing countries are using excess amounts of petroleum, and a lot has to do with the bizarre subsidizing schemes.

I think some form of world authority should be brought to bear so uniform conservation is undertaken, world wide.

Look at the amounts of oil that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and Iran are using.

I think all countries should adopt a minimum $0.50 per litre fuel tax. And, it should go up $0.25 each year to come. This cold be enforced by the U.N.

All faith based people, Christina, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, etc. can understand that God wants us to use these resources wisely, not waste them.

[smallpoxgirl]

Who's going to implement this world rationing Denny? Don't forget that the folks with the most oil consumption also lead the world in military spending.

[venky]

I think this table is one of the main reasons why Peak Oil = Doom argument is wrong.

Clearly there are countries that use a fraction of the oil per capita (in some cases 2 orders of magnitude of the largest consumers) and do get along relatively fine with many of the benefits of modern life. We thus clearly have a lot of buffer in the West; production will have to drop a long long way(with no help from alternatives) in order to make modern life unlivable.

[namenick]

Pixie- Not the answer but a useful bit of information in any case. You're assuming that all the people in the top 22 countries are the billion people in the world who consume the most oil. That's obviously not true and could skew the answer to the question many fold. I don't know of any way and don't think there is any way to determine who the top billion consumers of oil are. Remember, we started out by talking about the 6.5 billion people on this earth and how much oil they consumed compared to the other 5.5 billion.

Good work though!

[namenick]

pup55 wrote:

Also, as Cheney has pointed out, it will take the production equivalent of three more Saudi Arabias to get this to happen. This, of course, is why it will never happen.

They are going to be really ticked off when they find out they cannot get enough gas to run their new cars.

You seem to be making an assumption that the US oil wars are going to keep it affordable for Americans. That could be true but eventually, barring a running out of oil completely which isn't predicted, the people who can afford to run cars will be the ones running them. The US being a have-not oil country, I would guess that it won't be them. Maybe Saudis or Russians or Canadians or Iraqis.

Depends on how long it takes all those oil rich M.E. countries to get their own nuclear deterrant I suppose. That's when it would get too expensive for Americans to run their cars.

[wisconsin_cur]

name nick,

just because China will not be able to run all of their new cars (the subject in pup55's post) does not mean that we will nor does it assume that we will win any resource wars.

It just means a) the Chinese won't and b) this will make them mad. One need assume nothing to come to that conclusion.

There are many ways that could work out (a shooting resource war(s) being just one) but it would be hard to assert such an eventuality with the same certitude as the fact that there are limits to the supply of fossil fuels.

[Pixie]

Where is New Zealand?

63 New Zealand 155,742____4,115,771__0.0378

Typical oil use for a developed country, but small population, ranked number 63 on the list of total consumption, so didn't appear on my list. They are, however, in the top one billion per capita consumers.

[Pixie]

Pixie- Not the answer but a useful bit of information in any case. You're assuming that all the people in the top 22 countries are the billion people in the world who consume the most oil. That's obviously not true and could skew the answer to the question many fold. I don't know of any way and don't think there is any way to determine who the top billion consumers of oil are. Remember, we started out by talking about the 6.5 billion people on this earth and how much oil they consumed compared to the other 5.5 billion.

Good work though!

Thank you. Actually, I am making that assumption, but only as an approximation. I am only assuming that this is a decent approximation that allows an answer to the question, "How much do the top one billion use?" In reality, as you point out, there are wide disparities within each country that can not possibly be investigated by us.

Furthermore, my answer is skewed, because I didn't look at every country on the planet. My assumption in that case is that even if I looked at all 200+ countries listed by the EIA, the answer would not be too different from this. In fact, if I were to do that--look at all 200 (which would take me a few more hours that I don't yet have), the answer could only get more extreme than it appears here. Small, rich countries like New Zealand would be included, the percentage of total oil used would go up, and they would bump Pakistan out of the top 1 billion.

By the way, I am interested in doing this, and if I can find the time, I might do it. If I do, I will post an updated list. OR, if you are interested and have free time to play with spreadsheets, you are welcome to take on the task.

[Pixie]

I think this table is one of the main reasons why Peak Oil = Doom argument is wrong.

Clearly there are countries that use a fraction of the oil per capita (in some cases 2 orders of magnitude of the largest consumers) and do get along relatively fine with many of the benefits of modern life. We thus clearly have a lot of buffer in the West; production will have to drop a long long way(with no help from alternatives) in order to make modern life unlivable.

Agreed. We have a long way to drop before life is really truly unpleasant. But consider this: Saudi Arabia and many of the other oil exporting countries appear to be ramping up their consumption so fast that by 2030, they will be using all their own oil. We in the USA will have to get along on our own oil, which will be around 5 million bbd at that time (I think I am on the optimistic side with that estimate). So, we need to get used to living on 1/4 what we currently use. Totally do-able. The Britons and French do it, but we are not set up to be that efficient. Plus, we are much more spread out than they are. We have far longer distances to travel.

In a shorter run, China is ramping up their consumption and appears set to double their use in 14 years. So around 2022, they, and the oil exporting countries like S. Arabia, will have cut deeply into the oil available to us. By 2022, we can expect to have to cut our oil use by at least a third.

It's not that we can't live that way, but do we know how? And every nation will be squeezed that way. Eventually, even the Arabians will have to learn to do with less.

[Pixie]

On the subject of resource wars: let me point out that there will be no American-led resource wars in the Middle East if we don't have the oil to run our military.

[Pixie]

On the subject of resource wars: let me point out that there will be no American-led resource wars in the Middle East if we don't have the oil to run our military. To some extent, in the long run, these things are self-limiting.

[Plantagenet]

By 2022, we can expect to have to cut our oil use by at least a third.

It's not that we can't live that way, but do we know how?

Just follow the EU example.

People in EU countries have a very high quality of life but use much less oil. A good place for the US to start copying the EU would be by constructing a modern electric high speed train system connecting major American cities, and by building more light rail within the cities.

[Pixie]

By 2022, we can expect to have to cut our oil use by at least a third.

It's not that we can't live that way, but do we know how?

Just follow the EU example.

People in EU countries have a very high quality of life but use much less oil. A good place for the US to start copying the EU would be by constructing a modern electric high speed train system connecting major American cities, and by building more light rail within the cities.

Plantagenet, you and I got a bit bellicose over on that other thread on this subject. Let me just make it clear that I agree with you on this. More and better mass transit is the only way.