Every day, we use gasoline. Estimates suggest that we use 400 million gallons of gas daily.
How much gas is used in Iraq daily?
This may stagger you:
And foreign wars, sad to say, account for but a small fraction of the Pentagon’s total petroleum consumption. Possessing the world’s largest fleet of modern aircraft, helicopters, ships, tanks, armored vehicles, and support systems – virtually all powered by oil – the Department of Defense (DoD) is the world’s leading consumer of petroleum. It can be difficult to obtain precise details on the DoD’s daily oil hit, but an April report by a defense contractor, LMI Government Consulting, suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (53 million liters) every day. This is greater than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.
Gallons-wise, that is about 18 million gallons per day.
This suggests that about 5 % of our daily gasoline budget is spent in Iraq. This does not mean that if we left Iraq, gas prices would decline 5 %. No, they probably would decline 15-20 %.
When demand stretches supply like it is right now, as the supply is cut more and more, the demand pushes up prices higher and higher. Thus, if we released an amount equivalent to 5 % of the daily supply into the US, prices would probably drop by $1/gallon.
