National Gas Situation

The Energy Information Administration publishes data on the nation's supply of gasoline ( and other petroleum products ) and gas price. Keeping an eye on this data can help us gauge the state of the nation's ( and the world's ) gas tank and warn as about impending price rises.

Here is the total supply of gasoline in the nation:


Here is the history of the price of gasoline going back a couple of decades:


You can see the big jump in price since about the year 2000. Relative to about a decade ago, gas now costs three times as much. So on the 10 year time scale we are not doing very well on affordability. The chart of total national gasoline supply shows that over the same decade, levels have held roughly constant. Amounts of stored gasoline seesaw up and down, but if anything have gone slightly up.

The rear view mirror shows us a picture of stable availability but reduced affordability. I wonder if this trend will continue over the next decade? If it does we will soon enter an era in which rich men have all the gas they want and the rest of us just have to do without because we can't afford to buy it.

Have you ever wanted to see where gas comes from? Tomorrow's post will include a photo-montage of Ghawar, a giant oil field that produces 6.25% of the world's petroleum.

Checking In On the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Most US citizens have heard of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It is an emergency stockpile of crude oil maintained by the Department of Energy. It was initiated in 1975 as a response to the oil embargo earlier imposed on the United States in response to US involvement in the Yom Kippur war. Other countries also maintain petroleum reserves, for example China and Japan. The idea is that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could keep the Pentagon war machine running temporarily even during a war in which all imports to the country were cut off. It is not meant to act as an economic buffer, helping to stabilize oil prices (by releasing oil at price highs and buying at price lows). The US Energy Information Administration maintains charts showing how much crude oil is in the reserve. A current chart is shown above. As you can see, there is currently somewhere about 700 million barrels of oil in the reserve.