Where does your oil come from?

(photo courtesy Michelle Meiklejohn)

Here are some fun (slightly outdated) graphs from The Heritage Foundation, our favorite think (like Regan) tank. (Click on the graphs to see larger, more readable versions.)


As you can see, somewhere around the beginning of Bill Clinton's presidency, the dismantling of the Soviet Union, and my family's move to the coast (where were you!?), oil imports began rapidly outpacing domestic U.S. oil production. The Heritage blames the environmental laws (and their curbing of domestic production) for making us dependent on foreign oil (not, of course, any lack of political will to build a clean, renewable energy economy, or lust for exponential economic growth or anything.)

EDIT: Also notice the incredible rise in oil imports beginning around 1969. Why? And the incredible drop right around 1979 -- exactly when the Iranian Revolution ousted the U.S.-backed Iranian government.


We've got domestic production at a good 1/3 of our oil consumption. Not bad. Notice NAFTA basically making a majority of the U.S's oil needs under "domestic" control. OPEC (what the western media calls "a cartel" and others call "an oil producers body") makes up another third and another central player in supplying the U.S. addiction. And as the little slivers suggest, the U.S. certainly isn't opposed to other oil opportunities as well: Is that oil you got there lying under the ground? I mean...if you're offering? (No U.S! Ecuador actually just offered to get paid to KEEP THEIR OIL IN THE GROUND! Were you not listening!?)

Also, some more food for thought next time you're pissed off waiting for the car in front of you at the gas station. See that 6% from Nigeria and that 4% from Iraq. Yeah, be thankful. Or feel guilty. Either way, feel something. Oil is borne out of war-torn environments. And it's not by coincidence. That oil ain't comin' easily...or without militaries.

No wonder gas isn't cheap these days! Military security is expensive man!


Sabotage of pipeline in northern Iraq. Dec 2009. Al Jazeera.

this is what antiwar means

Kimberly Rivera served in the Iraq war, witnessing the horror of warfare and the sexual abuse of being a woman in the U.S. military. In February of 2007, she had two weeks at home in Texas before she was due to fly back to the carnage and psychological destruction that she'd known Iraq. After much hesitation and discussion with her husband, they packed all their belongings in the car and drove north to Toronto with their two young children, severing ties with their home, their friends, their family, and their past life. Ever since they've had to scrape buy to make a living and raise their kids, with support from the War Resisters Support Campaign in Canada.

She's managed to get her legal status tied up in the courts, buying her more time in the country. The next report from the courts on her status will be issued next month. If she is deported, as others have been, she'll likely serve several months of jail time in the states, as might her husband (for aiding a war resister), leaving their children without their parents.



Rodney Watson has been in Canada for two years. In the past few months, he was officially required to leave the country, but he is evading this deportation order from the Canadian government. He originally joined the U.S. military as a cook but ended up in horrific and purposeless combat, witnessing extreme racism by white US solider against Iraqis. Even though his contract with the military expired, he was stop-lossed and told to return to Iraq. This is when he fled to Canada, where he's been living since 2007, now with a financee and young boy.

THIS is what the antiwar movement is: SOLDIERS REFUSING TO FIGHT.

The Canadian Parliament has passed a resolution to grant US war resisters resident status in the country (where Vietnam war resisters still live to this day). They actually passed it TWICE, but the resolution is NON-BINDING.

A BINDING resolution was introduced two months ago...

If it passes (pressure really needs to be put on PM Stephen Harper), imagine what it'd do for the antiwar movement.