The US and Middle East Oil
America is Not as Dependent on Persian Gulf Oil as Some Might Think
Jun 4, 2008
As oil prices continue to climb energy security has become a prominent topic of debate in the US, particularly as 2008 is a presidential election year. Both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have promised Americans “energy independence” which would, theoretically, relieve the American consumer of having to buy petroleum from oil producers in the Middle East.
But how dependent is the US on oil supplies from the Middle East? Well, not nearly as much as people think. In fact the bulk of the US’ imported oil supplies come from closer to home and not from the Persian Gulf. Europe, Japan and China are actually more dependent on Middle East oil than the US is.
According to data from the US Department of Energy, of the top five suppliers of crude oil to the US only one, Saudi Arabia, is a Middle East exporter. In March 2008, the US imported 1.795 million barrels per day (b/d) from Canada, 1.535 million b/d from Saudi Arabia, 1.214 million b/d from Mexico, 1.154 million b/d from Nigeria, and 858,000 b/d from Venezuela. These top five suppliers accounted for 68 percent of total US crude oil imports for that month.
When looking at the top ten foreign suppliers of crude oil to the US, only two more Middle East exporters make the list: Iraq (sixth), which exported 773,000 b/d to the US in March 2008, and Kuwait (tenth), which exported 199,000 b/d. The top ten suppliers of crude oil to the US accounted for 87 percent of total US imports for that month. Other importers that made up the top ten were Angola (sixth, 368,000 b/d), Algeria (seventh, 247,000 b/d), and Ecuador (eighth, 231,000 b/d).
Total US crude oil imports in March 2008 averaged 9.583 million b/d, of which the share taken by Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait was 26 percent. Even including the Arab North African exporter Algeria in the mix does not make much of a difference to the total amount of oil the US gets from Muslim states in the Middle East/North Africa region. Because of sanctions the US does not import any oil from the region’s other major producer, Iran.
Other major oil consuming economies depend on oil from the Persian Gulf at least as much – or if not a lot more than – the US. For example, the Persian Gulf supplies about 83 percent of Japan’s oil imports, about half of China’s, and 27 percent of OECD Europe’s. The Middle East is also a substantial supplier to India.
While the US has become increasingly dependent on oil imports over the last forty years or so – in the early 1970s oil imports had a 28 percent share of the American oil market but this has grown to 60 percent today – this has not made the world’s largest oil market more acutely dependent on oil from the Middle East.
In his 2006 State of the Union address President George W. Bush promised to “replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025,” yet even if this occurred the US would still be importing substantial amounts of oil from the Americas and Africa.
At any rate as oil is freely bought and sold around the world it is impossible to choose where your oil comes from if you need to import it. And even sanctioned countries, like Iran, can sell their oil elsewhere. The only way to stop the need to import oil from the Middle East is to end the need to import oil overall. Given that US oil consumption is more than 20 million b/d this is no easy task.
