Archive for February 15th, 2013

Credit: Joshua Delaughter.

According to Bloomberg, U.S. oil demand is falling to levels not seen since the second Clinton administration — not just dipping a bit, we’re talking plummeting — 2012 saw the United States’s lowest levels of demand for oil since 1996.

“Total petroleum deliveries, a measure of demand, dropped 2 percent from 2011 to 18.6 million barrels a day last year,” Bloomberg said, adding that “for the month of December, demand slid 2.1 percent from a year earlier to 18.4 million barrels a day.”

And on top of an overall drop, imports of oil are falling too. Shale oil production coming online from production in North Dakota and Texas “has the U.S. on a course to cut its reliance on imported crude oil to about 42 percent this year, the lowest level in two decades,” according to a BusinessWeek report. Read the rest of this entry »