podpolia

China is mysteriously using less oil. This article is quite interesting on a number of fronts. It calls into question the veracity of some of the government-based reports of Chinese economic growth, as well as the stability and sustainability of China’s recent boom. A fluctuation of one percent of demand might not seem like much, but let’s look at the numbers:
The daily demand for oil in China (as of 2004) was about 5.8 million barrels per day. A fluctuation of 1% amounts to 58,000 barrels of crude per day. In the grand scheme of things, this might not seem like much, but multiplied by the amount of gasoline obtainable from one barrel of crude oil, that comes to 1,131,000 gallons of gasoline. Maybe not enough to make a sizeable dent in the world supply, but we can take this to a more personal level: my 1997 Ford Escort station wagon gets about 30 miles to the gallon. If I were to convert into gasoline and put in my car the same amount of oil that China has decreased its consumption by, I would be able to drive 33,930,000 miles per day. That comes to
56 1/2 round trips to the moon, or about 1,400 times around the equator. In order to use that much fuel in a day, I would have to drive nonstop at an average speed of 1.4 million miles per hour — just over two one-thousandths of the speed of light. However, here things start to get confusing . At that speed, 24 hours by my watch would equal 24 hours and .2 seconds by your watch, thanks to time dilation. That may not seem like much to you, but in that amount of time at that speed, I would have traveled around 75 miles — the width of New Hampshire, or twice across Rhode Island. The long way.
I think I’m off topic.
The most interesting thing about this article, in my mind, is that it confirms what I have suspected for quite a while: the current spike in gasoline prices is artificial, and is really not related to the supply available. Hopefully the market will see sense soon.