US Oil Consumption Bloomberg Article

It is a nice set of graphs, but we still have a ways to go. The oil 'revolution' has been to increase US production from 33% of US demand to 55% of demand.

Let's say the 400 lb man has lost 50 lbs, and can now climb one flight of stairs without passing out.

Many seem to think erroneously that the US is now a net oil exporter, as opposed to the largest importer. And many others seem happy to spread that confusion.

There is still a lot of low-hanging fruit left to pick. It's not shocking that we can so drastically decouple GDP growth from oil consumptions when we look at data points as recently as the wasteful era of the 1990s and early 2000s when soccer moms and commuters were driving large Hummers and SUVs with pitiful fuel efficiency.

One possibility is the decoupling of natural gas and oil prices, which varied together for the entire period in the graph until the divergence point in 2005 or so. A LOT of heavy industry and process heat, and home heating (bigger homes = more GDP) run on gas. So the left part of the chart really shows GDP tracking oil+ng, and the price decoupling can account for some of the divergence wedge.

Nowadays, ng seems weakly coupled to the price of coal. When there is a gas glut and the price drops low enough to compete with coal, then the utilities burn through the glut in short order, and the price recovers to its recent average level.