Friday, April 27, 2012

GDP, oil consumption and prices

Commenter Nick G noted that Wednesday's post neglected the role of GDP which is, of course, important to oil consumption in addition to oil prices.  Accordingly I have added a top panel showing real US GDP (in trillions of chained $2005).  A you might expect in the recent era of high oil prices, oil consumption and GDP are diverging as the US economy becomes more oil efficient.  Still, you can see that part of the 2008 and early 2009 drop in oil consumption was due to the great recession, in addition to the ongoing process of becoming more efficient.

I would guess that the lower pace of economic growth evident in 2011 and 2012, versus late 2009 and 2010, is due to the drag exerted by high ongoing oil prices.

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2 comments:

  1. BrianApril 27, 2012 at 10:13 AM

    I think this might be more informative if the oil consumption and GDP were per capita and if you included 4 charts: US population, real gdp/person, oil consumption/person, and oil/gas price.

    Population growth tends to obscure behavioral change in the gross numbers. Just a thought.

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  2. Alexander AcApril 28, 2012 at 5:36 AM

    Stuart,

    so finally debt is not important for the US economic "growth"?

    It takes $2.52 in new debt to "buy" $1 of economic "growth"

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