TV/radio commentators have been saying for a while now that civil unrest in Libya is causing oil speculators to drive up the price of oil. If only they used Wikipedia, or had access to data resources such as the CIA World Factbook to look up the top oil producing countries. For those of us without a subscription to the Oil & Gas Journal, this will have to do.
To put this into perspective, in 2008 Libya was the 18th largest oil producing country, a step behind the UK. Heck, I didn't even know the UK produced oil, but I knew the US did from prior research into this topic. Domestically we produce a tiny amount of oil, which is made into all sorts of petroleum products.
It's stupid. That's what it is. The average price of US regular gas has risen to about $3.50/gallon. Btw, there are 44 gallons to the barrel. You can do the math (plus tax) on how much it really costs us for gas. You may think that oil from the Middle East plays a big part in US crude oil consumption, but it really doesnt. The top two countries we import from are... get this: Canada and Mexico. The third is Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the list can be seen here.
