The United States is the largest consumer of oil in the world by a wide margin. In 2012, we used around 18.5 million barrels of oil per day (that’s nearly 800 million gallons !). That represents around 20% of global oil consumption, and is still nearly twice as much oil as China uses. Until the mid-2000s, U.S. oil consumption was rising steadily. However, a sharp uptick in oil prices caused demand growth to stagnate after 2004. The Great Recession then led to a steep drop in demand as people found ways to make do with less oil. In 2010, oil consumption looked like it might rebound, but since then, it has started to decline again. This is likely the beginning of a long-term trend. Here are three big reasons why U.S. oil consumption will continue shrinking. Natural gas hits the road The biggest […]