Our Trade Imbalance With Oil Suppliers

Yesterday I put up a blog which listed the total revenue that OPEC made from oil last year. Luanne, one of my readers, raised the valid point that those numbers didn't present the whole picture because the countries that we buy oil from also buy things from us. I thought it was only fair to do a little more research and see exactly how much oil we import from countries and how much of that money we get back in the form of revenue from things that we export to them.

To find a list of all the countries we import oil and related products from I turned to the Energy Information Agency where I found this page which lists all of our oil imports by country and quantity of oil products imported. Below are the numbers for our largest suppliers for 2007 (the most recent year available) in thousands of barrels.

Next I needed a source that would give me a picture of our trade balance with each country. For that information I turned to the US Census Bureau. Below are the results. As you see the money we have flowing out of our country to pay for the foreign oil we depend on is far larger than the amount of money we make from exporting goods and services to those countries. This just illustrates what Boone Pickens has been saying about the importance of becoming energy independent and keeping all of this money here in the US where it can create jobs and solve our economic problems.

Country	Oil Imported	Exports To Country	Imports From Country	Balance
	(In Thousands of Barrels)	(In Millions of Dollars)	(In Millions of Dollars)	(In Millions of Dollars)
OPEC Countries
Algeria	244,605	1,652.4	17,816.1	-16,163.6
Angola	185,352	1,280.1	12,507.6	-11,227.4
Ecuador	74,179	2,935.6	6,135.0	-3,199.4
Iraq	176,709	1,560.2	11,395.6	-9,835.4
Nigeria	413,932	2,777.9	32,770.2	-29,992.3
Saudi Arabia	541,987	10,395.9	35,626.0	-25,230.1
Venezuela	496,684	10,200.5	39,909.6	-29,709.1
Non OPEC
Canada	895,976	248,888.1	317,056.8	-68,168.6
Mexico	559,304	136,092.1	210,714.0	-74,621.8
Russia	151,074	7365.4	19,314.2	-11,948.8
Totals:	3,739,802	412,942.0	703,245.3	-280,096.5

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