America's Debt

Debt by Foreign Oil

The price for a barrel of foreign oil is right around one hundred and five dollars dollars. The United States are importing as much as twelve million barrels of oil daily. We are paying other countries 1.15 billion dollars a day for continued dependance of foreign oil. If we add that up it comes up to paying foreign countries 421 billion dollars a year for the oil.

Oil price and price manipulation by OPEC have cost our economy dearly about $1.9 trillion from 2004 to 2008 and which each major shock was followed by a recession.

The rising of oil prices has put great pressure on the U.S. dollar, as sending overseas more dollars to buy foreign oil aggravates an already negative balance of payments situation. The U.S. is approaching importing approximately 60 percent of the oil we consume, as much as 12 million barrels of the 20 million barrels Americans use every day.

Today America is importing over sixty percent of oil we use. America consumes 12 million barrels of oil a day. The use of this much oil costs us greatly. We use enough oil to say we are addicted to foreign oil. Our addiction to foreign oil is putting us further and further in debt.

We will never eliminate our need to import oil, but we can reduce cartel market control and the economic impact of price shocks by reducing our demand. Congress recently passed legislation to decrease our dependence on oil by increasing corporate average fuel economy standards on new cars and trucks to 35 mpg by model year 2020. This could reduce our petroleum use by 25 billion gallons by 2030.