How dependent is the U.S. on Persian Gulf oil? Not so much

On The Daily Show the other night, Jon Stewart's guest was Peter Tertzakian, author of a recently published book entitled, A Thousand Barrels a Second. Obviously, the topic of oil and gas is a somewhat timely one given the events of the last few years, including war in the Middle East, hurricanes hitting the U.S. and gasoline price spikes around the world.

Tertzakian is a Canadian and an expert on the oil and gas industry, having worked eight years for Chevron Corporation and then going on to success as an energy industry investment analyst. Currently, he is Chief Energy Economist and Director of ARC Financial Corporation, one of the world's leading private equity firms focused on energy.

In short, he knows his stuff.

But what really caught my attention was when Stewart asked Tertzakian: From which country does the United States acquire the largest percentage of its imported oil? And Stewart acknowledged - as I think most of us would - that the answer shocked him.

The country?

Canada.

Really?

Really.

As Stewart said, he assumed the answer would be Saudi Arabia or, perhaps, Iran or Iraq. Nope. And I would venture to guess that well over 90% of the U.S. population, when asked that same question, would assume the answer would be a country in the Persian Gulf. Again, nope.

It seems that, whenever the discussion turns to oil and gas, most everyone assumes that our dependency on foreign oil - our addiction, if you will - is tied directly to the Middle East and the murder and mayhem constantly taking place there. But as we learned from the recent discussion between Stewart and Tertzakian, that assumption is completely false.

My interest sufficiently piqued, I decided to do a little follow-up research on the web. After uncovering some official import statistics from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration web site, I found what I was looking for:

Crude Oil Imports (Top 15 Countries) (Thousand Barrels per Day)
Country	Dec-05	Nov-05	YTD 2005	Dec-04	Jan - Dec 2004
CANADA	1,892	1,776	1,642	1,556	1,616
MEXICO	1,707	1,658	1,550	1,552	1,598
SAUDI ARABIA	1,438	1,267	1,438	1,449	1,495
VENEZUELA	1,183	1,009	1,231	1,379	1,297
NIGERIA	1,174	1,163	1,060	1,006	1,078
ANGOLA	425	641	450	306	306
IRAQ	390	572	520	626	655
ECUADOR	340	264	276	261	232
KUWAIT	268	273	215	205	241
ALGERIA	212	265	228	199	215
BRAZIL	159	65	94	0	51
GABON	139	66	127	233	142
COLOMBIA	135	281	156	135	142
NORWAY	66	103	119	63	143
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO	62	70	62	22	49

Sure enough, we import the most crude oil from our neighbors to the north. In fact, approximately 36% of our imports come from our two North American neighbors and top two crude oil partners, Canada and Mexico, while only about 20% of our imports come from the Middle East.

Furthermore, because our imported oil represents only about 50-60% of our total consumption (meaning our domestic production makes up the balance), the percentage of our total consumption - around 20 million barrels a day - that comes from the Middle East is only in the range of 10-12%. That's it! And about two-thirds of that comes from Saudi Arabia with most of the remainder coming from Iraq and Kuwait.

Now, I don't want to necessarily imply that Middle Eastern oil is insignificant to us. Certainly, that region of the world has vast reserves of fossil fuels. But to learn that better than 75% of our nation's consumption of crude oil is supplied by the U.S., Canada and Mexico? Needless to say, it came as quite a surprise.

So it begs the questions: If we really aren't so reliant on Middle Eastern oil after all, why is it that we all believe we are? And why is it that our government continually drives home the point that we are?

And more to the point: Are we dependent upon the Middle East....or is the Middle East dependent upon us?

Another one of those things that make you go, "Hmmmmmmmm."