The snippets from that article are a bit misleading on several points.
By what metric do we measure "consumption"? If you use raw numbers as the snippet seems to suggest (it's hard to interpret the exact metric used as the excerpt mentioned only "gasoline and diesel"), California isn't even the biggest oil consuming state in the US. Texas is, by almost double. However, raw numbers don't paint a very complete picture. Per capita consumption would seem more illustrative, and on that list, California is #41 among the fifty states (Alaska is #1 in per capita oil consumption). If you want to compare consumption in relation to the size of each states' economy, which would also seem more accurate than raw numbers, California again rates in the bottom ten states.
It is important to remember that California is a large state which by itself accounts for 13% of the US's total GDP. To put it in perspective, if California was an independent nation, its economy (by GDP) would rank anywhere from 7th to 10th in the world, depending on the standard used. Its population, larger than Canada, for example, would rank it in the top thirty-five.
Regardless, the US - California included - is seen as a mature market, with relatively steady (if not falling) demand that was already factored into the world demand equation before this run-up started. On the other hand, "emerging economies" such as China and India are very early in their growth curve, with explosive demand predicted over the next decade (and not just for gasoline and diesel, but heating oil, electricity, oil for manufacturing plastics and other consumer goods, etc). This new demand over the last decade versus a relatively stagnant supply, refining, and transportation system, has put upward pressure on prices and caused speculation that world demand is on the verge of a significant leap, with no foreseeable equivalent increase in supply.
This vision of the future is affecting the market. Many players in the commodities futures market seem to think that oil is going to the $175 - $200 range in the next six months, which makes the current price seem cheap and therefore a slam-dunk buy. More buyers than sellers (of anything) drives prices higher.
Of course, anything that upsets that psychology can affect prices, such as the sell-off and concurrent $20 drop in crude this week after the executive ban on US offshore drilling was lifted. That was really only a symbolic gesture since legislative action is also required, but even the hint that future supplies could increase changed the market dynamic in the short term, and triggered a sell-off. If no other moves are made to indicate supplies may increase in real terms, jitters will ease, and the upward march in prices will most likely resume.
lwmuddy wrote: I think that some Americans think that all 1.3 Billion people have cars like we do.
I don't know about the rest of China, but when I was in Beijing, just about everyone had a car (or at least it seemed like it because of the heavy traffic and air pollution). Here is an example of what I saw.
lwmuddy wrote: ......I think that some Americans think that all 1.3 Billion people have cars like we do. So many here in the US couldn't even locate China on a map.
Just because the "Networks" say something is true it doesn't necessarily have to be completely factual or in the correct context.
Blind obedience is what they want, but they ain't getting from me........(Jean Kerr)
Daughter and SIL recently spent 2 weeks in China and their experiences were that the auto traffic was horrendous.
China and India are a mix of some of the most populated, teeming cities in the world, complete with snarled traffic, high rises, bustling business districts, and squalid slums on one hand, and millions of people who live an almost primitive agrarian existence on the other, not only without access to motor vehicles, but in many cases, not even what we would consider the basics of modern life. China alone has an estimated 10 million people living in rural areas with no electricity, much like many people in this country lived in the first half of the 20th century, prior to the push for "rural electrification".
So yes, it's correct to say that China and India have a long way to go to bring the majority of their people up to modern standards of services and transportation, and that's exactly the point. Compare the population of the US, 300 million, the vast majority of whom already live in electrified areas with access to modern transportation (even many of the "poor" in the US have cars), therefore with comparatively little energy demand growth potential, to China at 1.3 billion people (amazingly, over a billion more people than the third most populous nation in the world, the US), and India at 1.1 billion, many of whom are just consumers waiting for the opportunity to consume (which explains the mad rush of western companies into the Chinese market).
Here's is India's answer to the car that put Americans on wheels early in the 20th century, the Model T, and the "people wagon" that put many Europeans on wheels after WW2, the Volkswagon. It's aimed primarily at Indians who never owned a car before. It's time to trade in that ox cart on a new Tata:
So combining India and China, totaling around 2.4 Billion folks, eager to live the "American Dream", we will become chop liver.
So, after they both go through the Middle Eastern oil supplies they will want all of ours and we will of course sell it to them.
"Kirk realizes that "Yangs" and "Coms" are actually distorted forms of "Yanks" and "Communists," and this somewhat implausible observation is confirmed when the Yangs display a tattered old U.S. flag".
Could the author of this story have had an insight into the future?
Or just a mere coincidence?
Many Americans have long laughed at and persecuted the Chinese and now it seems to be coming back to bite us.
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