Some 30 years ago, amidst the oil crises of the 1970’s, the United States Government began compiling information related to US oil consumption and published it annually in the “ Transportation Energy Data Book.” It is now being prepared by the Center for Transportation Analysis at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is available on line at www.cta.ornl.gov/data.
Until recently, the publication of 200+ charts and tables, which contain thousands of snippets of information relating to how America manages to consume 20 million barrels of oil each day, was only of interest to policy wonks into transportation. For the rest of us, so long as cheap gas was available at every station, hardly anybody cared where it came from and where it was going. This lack of interest is about to change. In the years following peak oil production, availability of gasoline and other fuels will shrink rapidly.