U.S. Imports Of Saudi Oil Fall By 50 Percent

It's become conventional wisdom that the U.S. needs to reduce how much oil it imports from Saudi Arabia, in order to both improve our energy independence and to stop sending billions of dollars to the country that spawned Osama Bin Laden and almost all of the 9/11 hijackers.

That demand became a bipartisan campaign refrain in both the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections and has been repeated by countless columnists such as the New York Times's Thomas Friedman.

So, the recent announcement that oil imports from Saudi Arabia had dropped dramatically to its lowest point in 22 years and that the country had fallen from second to fifth (behind Nigeria) on the list of the biggest foreign suppliers of oil to the U.S. in August would seem to represent a fulfillment of that wish.

Not if you talk to oil industry analysts who emphasize that the reduction is due to the whims of Saudi Arabia and not to any change in policy or procedure by U.S. oil companies.

"Saudi Arabia runs the cartel (OPEC) so when they want to keep prices up, they price it so that no one wants it," energy analyst Philip Verleger tells Huffington Post.

Indeed, though Saudi Arabia's oil exports to the U.S. fell in half, from 1.533 million barrels per day in August 2008 to 745,000 barrels per day in August 2009, overall this year, the country was still third among the biggest oil exporters.

Comments

[sposton]

Saudis are slowly moving away from the US $. After Nixon took us off the gold standard it was the scheme that was cooked up with Saudis that saved the US $ by the newly discovered mechanism of dollar recycling. We protected the Saudis and in exchange oil was priced in dollars which effectively meant that the US $ was "backed" by oil. Saudis recycled their excess dollars by using US companies to build up the modern infrastructure in their country. This was the beginning of the end of the US $ and now we are beginning to see the cliff... Not even Iraqi oil can save us.

[gakabani]

About time, America needs to keep itself away from Israel and Saudi Arabia. Both are fanatical war mongering countries that support extreme views.

[SkipStone]

This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that when the Bushies were in power, they secretly negotiated sweetheart deals for oil companies that priced Saudi Oil lower than other countries oil. Now that Obama is president, there is no sweetheart deal from Saudi Arabia.

But we have sweetheart deals with Iraq...

[FreedomCorpse]

Its too bad Al Gore made everyone freak about global warming AFTER him and Bill were in office and could have done something about an entire transportation system highly dependent on fossil fuels.

[yappnmutt]

this article is too funny. the entertainment editor has no business reporting on the oil market.

[FreedomCorpse]

Funny like the President that sent our troops to Afghanistan and Iraq when the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia? You mean that kind of funny?

[bisbeeornotbisbee]

Right on.

[whatbox]

Saudi Arabia is running out of oil ...

[jerrypl]

This may likely push the Saudis into joining the BRIC group of nations to move away from the US dollar when trading in oil.

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

[nopilikia]

If only it was imports of lobbyists cash to Congress fell by 50 percent.

[brady61995]

or 100% even better

[liberalbug]

I want cheap gas! It's my god given right as an American!!!!

[Vyvjala]

WHEN YOU DON'T FALL IN LINE, the corporate mafia leans on you.......­..........

[Squeezer55]

Fully weaning from carbon based fuels at this time in history is not going to happen. It's somewhere way down the road - certainly not in our lifetime. However converting over to natural gas is possible right now. Natural gas is cleaner burning, less polluting, requires less processing and most importantly, there's 100 years worth right under the U.S. All it requires is for the oil companies to start converting gas stations over to natural gas refilling stations. That would simply require a pipeline to be laid in , much like it is for a home. Argentina has over 1 million vehicles running on natural gas - the U.S. has about 50,000. If one third of cars in the U.S. converted to natural gas, every single barrel of imported oil could be sent back with a " thanks, but no thanks".

[spyguy68]

Peak Oil is coming a lot sooner than you think, so the US will be forced to convert off oil almost overnight and there isn't enough money in the world for the US to accomplish that in such a short time frame.

Yes CNG would be nice for cars, but it will take much more time than we have available to make the change.

Things are going to get really bad for a while in the not too distant future.

[dinglebe]

For those who are in denial, read "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler.

[drkazmd65]

To my mind it isn't particularly important to whom we are sending our petrodollars,... whether it be Saudi Arabia or whomever.

We should be sending less of them overseas period. The more self-sufficient we get period, the better off we will be. Keep the dollars here as much as possible, building our own infrastructure, materials, and value at home.

[NO more Bonus]

Due to Obama's inability to create an effective jobs program the only beneficiaries of this recovery is Wall Street- the same it's been since the 80's. FDP knew how to make work, but Obama doesn;t or chooses not to.

good articles; http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com
because of this he may lose in 2012.

[Max-OneTruePatriot]

FAIL.

planetpov DOT com

[Rule Of Law]

Fail? What is this fail bee ess? Are you his teacher?

Show me where he's wrong. Show me the jobs programs and reindustrialization policies--not talk--that Obama has created!

Show us all...

[Raccoon1]

You don't suppose that having Republican'ts oppose, deny, and delay everything the Dems try to do has anything to do with it, do you? The Republican'ts presently have 81 filibusters actively blocking appointments to government jobs that need to be filled to help the government work effectively.

[Rule Of Law]

So, with a little real leadership we override their silly fillibusters, do the 51 votes necessary to pass--just like the neos did for 8 years whenever we had the guts to actually challenge them, and we move right along!

[Erdgeist]

The world needs to stop dragging its knuckles. Our need for carbon based fuel is no different than it was perhaps a million years ago. We are still troglodytes, in other words. What we need is Dr. Searl's invention which essentially is a maco-atom. Not only does it produce free energy, but at higher revolutions it is anti-gravitic. He flew his disk in front of BBC cameras in the late '60s. His anti-gravitic flight made it in all the papers. But the world is still fast asleep in primitivism. But soon it will wake up.

http://www.searlsolution.com/technology2.html

[leduck]

doesn't "free" energy break the laws of themrodynamics???

[metalpipe]

It flies in the face of our favorite pastime. Greedism.

[vippy]

Silly headline - we get most of our oil from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. Europe gets it from the Saudis. Plus the USA exports 1.5 million barrels per day. We have capped our own rigs in TX, OK and Colorado. Bankers bought up all cheap oil last year with our bailout money and are storing super tankers offshore so they can sell it to us now at $ 80 per barrel. Amazing.

[leduck]

like us..., mexican oil is in terminal decline
yearly production declines from year to year

[drkazmd65]

Which is exactly why we need to start to seriously wean ourselves off oil ASAP,... we should have been doing so since Jimmy Carter started pointing us in that direction back in the 1970s.

Easy to get oil is gone. The moderately easy to get oil is peaking, or has already peaked and is in decline (depending on who gets asked the question). All the newer finds are harder to get, smaller, cruder, or otherwise less desirable to use.

We have a grace period that is shrinking quickly - we need to use that time wisely.