Debbie Schlussel: Good News, Bad News on American Oil Imports: Schlussel Analysis
There is good news and bad news on America's importation of oil.
The good news:
For the first time in 21 years, Africa topped the Middle East as a source of U.S. crude-oil imports, with a 22% share (the Mid-East is close behind also with 22%, but African oil imports exceed that from the Mid-East by 8,000 barrels).
This is the result of Africa's rising oil output aided in part by U.S. investment. Persian Gulf oil has been pulled eastward to Asia.
Also, Canada and Mexico, respectively, remain our largest and second largest sources of oil imports. That's good.
The bad news:
The African oil output only replaces declining oil supplies we were importing from Norway and the U.K. And much of Africa is dominated by growing Islamofascist governments, insurgents, and other forms of Banana Republicanism. Better news would be that we were importing a larger share from non-Islamic countries and more stable governments. Neither is the case.
Still, we can try to leverage our new status as a large African oil customer with African governments and try to wean ourselves completely away from Arabist ones and Iran.
Posted by Debbie on February 22, 2007 11:07 AM to Debbie Schlussel