First of all, let's get one thing straight. Saudi Arabia doesn't "produce" oil", it extracts it. Any country's "oil production" is really its oil extraction. That one phrase alone — "produce oil" — has created real havoc in world political and economic circles. As Youssef Ibrahim, a former senior Middle East correspondent with the New York Times and energy editor of the Wall Street Journal has said, "Oil and politics are a flammable cocktail".During the very heated 2004 presidential season, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East played a major role in the political campaigns of both major presidential campaigns. Though many observers would say that George W. Bush was not evenhanded in his positions on Middle East issues and that he often seemed to serve as a pawn for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, John Kerry took even more extreme positions on most issues related to the Middle East. A cornerstone in Kerry's presidential campaign was the imperative in his national security policy — "Free America from its dangerous dependency on Mideast (read Saudi Arabia and the Gulf) oil". Kerry went on to state, "Today, we consume 2.5 million barrels of oil per day from the Middle East whose instability has pushed prices to record highs. These soaring energy costs are burdening middle class families with higher gas prices and dependence on Middle East oil is putting our national security at risk". Kerry also stated during his campaign speeches, "Letting the Saudi royal family control our energy costs makes President Bush unfit to lead the nation". Was this just political rhetoric? Let's look at the data regarding energy and oil and see what some of the experts have to say.
Most energy statisticians state that about 2/3 of the world's proven oil reserves are in five Gulf countries — Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. According to Hassan Al Husseini, a Saudi oil consultant, 25percent of the world's oil is in Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia extracts about 12 percent of the world's daily oil usage. The United States with about five percent of the world's population uses about 25 percent of the world's oil. And the US consumes almost 50 percent of the world's gasoline daily. Where does that oil come from and how dependent are we on "Mideast oil"?