US Oil and Natural Gas Imports

CNN has one of those special reports features that gives one bar graph of oil imports and another bar graph of natural gas imports. To be honest, the graphs look more like British Petroleum (BP) ads than news but they're reasonably accurate (but I'm not sure how long they'll be up).

The thing to keep in mind about natural gas is that the reason we get such a huge percentage from Canada is that natural gas is cheaper to import by way of a pipeline than it is by tanker (and also safer).

Russia has considerable natural gas reserves. If our relations with Russia improve before others lock up the markets, it's possible we might someday have an undersea pipeline from Russia to the US by way of Siberia and Alaska but that presents a technological challenge and perhaps a much higher price tag than importing by tanker.

Most of the world's remaining natural gas is in the Eurasia land mass and Africa is easily connectable as a producer or consumer. That's three continents where markets will increasingly be reachable by pipeline. That presents near term problems for the Americas as more natural gas imports become necessary and also problems for Australia and various island nations not close to a land mass and pipeline. All nations, however, need to think about longer term solutions.