Thursday, October 30, 2008

Where do your Petrodollars go?

The Energy Information Administration, a department of the US Dept of Energy, publishes a monthly report listing all petroleum products imported into the United States, broken down by company.

There's some interesting stuff in there. Personally, I like to get gas from companies that import little or no oil from oppressive Theocracies. This report identifies them.

You can download the spreadsheet for yourself here (top link in the list), but I've prepared some quick statistics on the major-brand gas retailers. It's not 100% reliable because independent gas stations buy from a variety of importers & refiners - but rather directionally helpful.
Given, I arbitrarily selected Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. I left out several moderate Arab states like Oman and Kuwait. But through this lens, some things are starkly apparent.
  • ExxonMobil - more than 40% of their oil imports come from Saudi Arabia & Iraq
  • Chevron - not far behind, with 34% of petroleum imports coming from those two countries
  • Marathon - imports 28% of their petroleum from Saudi Arabia
  • BP & Valero - both get more than one fifth of their oil from Iraq, Libya & Saudi Arabia
On the flip-side, these companies import little or no petroleum from Iraq, Libya & SA:
  • Hess
  • Irving
  • Sinclair
  • Citgo (mostly from Venezuela; I'm okay with that)
  • Sunoco
  • Shell (imports less than 6% from Libya)
  • ConocoPhillips (imports 8.4% from the three, but only 1.3% from Saudi Arabia)
The experts say this is a goofy way to decide where to fill your tank - since there's a limited supply of petroleum, any intelligent company is going to buy from where there's availability - but I have to admit that the silver lining of filling my tank at Sunoco or Shell is knowing that not a penny of it is going to line the pockets of the Saudi royal family.

EDIT: And while all of this data is just for the month of August, I've pulled the report in other months and the percentages are relatively consistent.

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