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Comment by jey | Hacker News Reader

> America is burning about 18 million barrels per day (mbpd), down from about 21 mbpd in 2005-2006

Interesting. What accounts for the decline?

There was a recession. Unemployment is 9%. Outside the US, oil is >$100/bl (this will affect the import price). These things can dampen demand.

cash for clunkers got a statistically signification number of poor milage cars off the road, that also helped with our nations oil consumption.

But caused a significantly greater demand for energy to make new cars.

If it was worth it to trade your guzzler for a new car people would do it on their own without incentives. But a new car uses more energy than it saves for many many years. It's only worth it when the old car dies.

I have a hard time believing this. Let's take an environmentally attractive car, like the TDi Jetta. How many barrel-of-oil equivalents would you estimate it takes to produce a car like this, in mass quantity?

About 200 to 300 barrel of oil. Or about 20 - depending on who you ask.

Basically how far down and across the manufacturing chain do you count the energy. Most places use the second number since it's direct energy for that car. I prefer the first since it also includes things like overhead for the sales team, the engineering, building the manufacturing plant and everything else it takes to actually make a car.

Whoa. For reference, 300 barrels of at today's prices is over $24k.

Certainly as others have said the major economic downturn has contributed to this. I do wonder what effect energy savings programs from the past few years have helped as well. I'm thinking about things like CFLs, better energy saving appliances, etc. But... what effect do those have on barrels of oil? Perhaps none. I'm not enough of an energy geek to know. :/

Most of the fossil fuel that's burned to produce electricity is natural gas or coal. Natural gas is generally for smaller production more variable production (peak load) and coal for larger base load demands.

Price increases and the economic downturn.

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