W & Foreign Energy: Stemming the Tide

Patriot Room ^ | 1-13-09 | Clyde

[Scott Martin]

The press and politicians have fed us this line of being "dangerously dependent on foreign oil." Articles are easy enough to find.

It seems to me that we need to look at foreign oil not as a stand-alone item, but in relation to GDP. Since GDP grows, one would expect our use of oil to grow. So the data needs to be normalized somehow.

So I gathered the source data - Real GDP (Chained) and Imports of Foreign Oil. I found that the normalizing would be somewhat useless - just a look at the data makes it clear.

One of my hopes for W was that he could lessen our reliance on foreign oil. I had hoped somehow that he could convince Mexico to sole source to us - that would be over 2 of the 13 million barrels we import a day. A good start. Didn't happen.

So now that the data for W's presidency is in, let's see the GDP and foreign oil data...

[ggekko60506]

An interesting post.

The other unheralded triumph of the Bush Administration has been the revival of the Nuclear Power Industry have been on its deathbed just a few years earlier.

It appears at this point that it will be very difficult both economically and politically for Obama to put the Nuclear genie back into the bottle.

This single initiative by President Bush promises to have a more profound effect on the National Economy and National Security than anything done Clinton or likely to be done by Obama.