103 comments on CBC: Your Basic Petroleum Depletion Story (a Story You're Likely Going to be Seeing a Lot More of Soon)
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103 comments on CBC: Your Basic Petroleum Depletion Story (a Story You're Likely Going to be Seeing a Lot More of Soon)
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That's not what my graph shows at all. It demonstrates that regardless of price, per capita consumption has remained relatively unchanged for the past 24 years in the United States. In other words, it demonstrates a tendency towards relatively inelastic demand at the individual consumer level over a 24 year period. In the short term, price is incredibly elastic and demand is relatively inelastic (same trend as long-term).
A "high" energy user--the US--is projected to jump from 300 million to 420 million in the next 30 years. If historical consumption remained linear, that would require an additional 8.2 million barrels a day production. I also see India and China increasing their oil consumption at double-digit yearly rates.
I'm having a hard time figuring you out--are you willfully manipulative or just struggling with the information?
Prices have been low the last 24 years (except just recently), you have to go back further to get the picture.
All those new high energy users are going to be conservationists like you wouldn't believe! :-)
Prices have not been low in the last 24 years--they hit their historical peaks during this period. You need to check your data. Be sure to control for inflation. Be sure the data is from a reliable source:
BP Anual Statistical Review, 2006
US Inflation Rate Conversion Factors
?
The BP table gives 1980 as the peak for prices. That's more than 24 years ago.
But if your point is that once prices began to fall, there were no further decreases in per capita consumption even though prices were still rather high for a while, I'll grant you that. The expectation of rising prices was gone and so was the incentive to conserve.