oil

For years, Ali al Naimi was the most important person in the world of oil: the former CEO of Saudi Aramco ascended to the post of Saudi oil minister in 1995, and over the past 21 years had the power to send the price of oil soaring or plunging with one word. To be sure, over the past two years it was mostly plunging because as is well-known, Saudi Arabia's policy ever since the 2014 Thanksgiving OPEC meeting in which Saudi Arabia broke off from the rest of the petroleum cartel to pursue its intention of putting US shale and high cost OPEC production out of business.

It was almost a year ago, when having tumbled in early 2015, oil proceeded to rebound strongly into the summer, where it traded at about $60 for three months, before US production resumed resulting in the next big leg lower which culminated with this's February drop to 13 year lows. At that point a comparable rebound to last year materialized, and just like last year,  the pundits have emerged claiming that there will be no further downside. Incidentally, we covered this comparison previously in "For Oil 2016 Is Setting Up To Be A Rerun Of Last Year."

Ever wondered where the United States imports its oil from?

Howmuch.net came out with some infographics to show that from 2000 to 2015. What we would highlight here is the notable shift from the U.S. depending heavily on Middle East countries and Mexico, to depending more on America's neighbor to the north, Canada.

In 2000, the U.S. imported 661 million barrels of oil from Canada, 503 million barrels from Mexico, and a combined 902 million barrels from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.

by David Haggith

Submitted by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,