10 Things You Didn't Know About Oil

Now that it's costing $4 a gallon or more to fill up our gas tanks, it's hard not to pay attention to news about the oil markets. Beyond that fact that crude oil prices have repeatedly reached all-time highs this year, though, there's a lot more to petroleum than you might be aware of:

1. Petroleum isn't refined into just gasoline for your car. It's also a critical ingredient for a host of other products, including ink, car tires, antiseptics, soft contact lenses, pantyhose, fertilizers, candles, house paint, vitamin capsules, shaving cream, shoe polish, antihistamines, food preservatives, petroleum jelly, nail polish, deodorants, carpets, dishwashing liquids, heart values and insect repellant. In fact, 18 percent of the petroleum we use ends up not in gas tanks but in plastics, rubber and other products.

2. With oil prices spiraling upward, it makes sense that all those other petroleum-based products are also getting more costly. The Wall Street Journal recently identified 50 things that have been hit by high oil prices, including steeper fees for pizza delivery, more police departments adopting foot patrols, fewer volunteers for Meals on Wheels and higher garbage collection charges.

3. Of the 12.5 million barrels of petroleum a day the U.S. imported in May 2008, only 20 percent came from Persian Gulf countries, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that we import more oil every year from non-OPEC nations than from OPEC countries. Canada and Mexico, for example, both send us more oil every year than does Saudi Arabia.

4. Which other countries send oil to the U.S. each year? You might be surprised to discover they include Aruba (110,000 barrels a day in 2007), Denmark (6,000 barrels a day), Norway (141,000 barrels a day) and the U.K. (278,000 barrels a day).

5. There are 12 member nations in OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries): Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Indonesia was also an OPEC member until recently, but left the organization in May 2008.

6. Compared to other commodities, this year's price increases for oil and gas are "about average," the American Petroleum Institute asserts. In the first six months of 2008, gasoline prices rose 44.2 percent, while the cost of corn shot up 66.4 percent, soybeans were up 37.5 percent and sugar increased 28.6 percent. The worst commodity price hike to date? U.S. natural gas, whose cost has skyrocketed 81.4 percent since Jan. 1, 2008.

7. The rising demand for fossil fuels of all kinds is leading to some unusual discoveries, including a potential treasure trove of natural gas under Jamaica and up to 4.3 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken formation under North Dakota, Montana, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

8. Oil is more than a fossil fuel from the age of the dinosaurs. One team of scientists theorizes that oil might have actually helped kill off the dinosaurs. They speculate the giant meteor that struck the Earth 65 million years ago might have crashed into deposits of oil shale, fueling a massive burn that filled the atmosphere with particle pollution and caused dramatic and deadly climate change.

9. A recent report by CIBC World Markets analysts Jeff Rubin and Benjamin Tal forecasts that oil prices will reach $200 a barrel by 2010. That means drivers in the U.S. could soon be paying $7 a gallon to fill their tanks. By late next year, Rubin and Tal say, we'll regularly be spending more on gas than on groceries ... and looking in droves for alternatives to driving.

10. As of 2006, the U.S. consumed about 24 percent of the world's annual oil output. Given all of the above, though, that could be changing soon.