Oil is on everyone’s mind these days. I think the barrel price went to $52 sometime yesterday afternoon. That will translate to something like $2.35 a gallon at the local gas station.
Before I go further with this, a fact or two, starting with Supertankers; An Ultra Large Crude Carrier (ULCC) can carry 360,000 tons of oil, or more. A 42 gallon barrel weighs 315 pounds (more or less…some oil is heavier). 360,000 tons is 720,000,000 pounds and divide that by the weight of the barrels and the tanker carries 2,285,714.29 barrels of oil. This is worth $118,857,142.86…Whew! And to add to those numbers – we consume 17,000,000 barrels a day. Let’s see 17 million times $52, equals a daily oil bill of $884,000,000. And we need about 9 of those ULCC’s a day. And if the price of a barrel goes down 10 cents while the ship is sailing, the seller loses $228,571.43
OK, now you know more than you wanted to know about oil and its price. But what I really wanted to write about was how we are wasting oil. A good friend of mine and a brilliant mind as well…once told me that our grandchildren would one day condemn our generation and those past for how we wasted precious oil by burning it in automobiles and burning it for heat. Then he talked about all of the other uses for oil that we have just begun to explore…Not just plastics, but super plastics, structural plastics. Many pharmaceuticals are petroleum based. His list of uses and possible uses went on and on.
I understand that our petroleum usage is now divided up at 40% for other use and 60% for transportation. So saving gas is more than just an exercise to help you balance your personal budget, its giving a gift to your grandchildren.
Want to know more statistics about oil?
http://www.oilcrisis.com/debate/oilcalcs.htm
Super tankers?http://www.wcsscience.com/supertanker/page.html
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