Demand for oil is intimately connected to the demand for transportation in the United States and the other advanced industrial economies. Cars, trucks, airlines, railways and shipping accounted for 71 percent of total U.S. oil consumption in 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Petroleum-derived fuels, including gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and fuel oil, met 97 percent of the transportation sector’s energy needs. Before the oil shocks of the 1970s as much as half of U.S. oil demand came from power producers and for heating homes, offices and factories. But following the sharp rise in prices, oil’s role in other parts of the economy was largely replaced by cheaper coal, gas, nuclear and eventually renewables, leaving oil as a transport fuel. The same pattern was repeated across the other advanced industrial economies. Oil demand has become inseparable from the demand for transportation services. But […]