Alright, I've been curious for a long time on which states use more petroleum than in others, and in which sectors. So I did some stat-crunching and illustrating, and the results I found were quite interesting, and maybe some of you here could explain why on some of these.

To get the stats, I used this site:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/state/ny.html

To see the Excel sheet of the calculations, you can go here (it's a bit unorganized, because I'm getting tired):

http://www.theskyiscrape.com/nick/EV.xls

These rankings are as of 2001.

Alright, to start off, here's the total petroleum consumption:



New York leads the way with only 1.86 gallons used per day, per person. The West, the Midwest, and surprisingly, most of the South, does pretty well, while the Plains States are abysmal. An odd thing to note is upper New England ranking so poor.

Alaska and Hawaii, of course, are the freak states. Hawaii in particular is really thrown off by, as you might imagine, jet fuel consumption, which is almost as much as gasoline consumption. Wyoming is another statistical freak, as well.

Putting those aside, Texas and Louisiana are by far the highest consumers per capita (6.09 gallons per day per person for Texas, 7.43 for Louisiana)

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Now, I think most of you would agree that if serious petroleum conservation were to take place, the sector that would have to be attacked the hardest is gasoline--just getting the average American from Point A to Point B. Well, here's the next chart:



New York, as you might imagine with dense NYC, is far and away the best conserver, at only 0.81 gallons per day per person. Another obvious one is Illinois in 6th place with Chicago.

In general, the Northeast and the West dominate in conservation, while the South is the abysmal region.

But there are real head-scratchers here. California was a big one: despite its infamy in SoCal in particular for gridlock and air pollution, ranks a very decent 9th. Colorado, Arizona, and Florida were all higher than I thought, as well.

On the other end, what's up with New Hampshire and Vermont? They're a couple of red states surrounded in a sea of green.

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To try to figure out those oddities, I then also decided to do a chart based on how big of a percentage each state consumes in gas as part of total petroleum, the idea being how much the personal transportation sector would be impacted with a petroleum shortage:

The national average, BTW, is 43.6%.



Now, things start to shape up, a little, with some freaks mixed in as well. In fact, all of the top five you pretty much have to throw out. Texas and Louisiana are huge freaks, since they consume a LOT more petroleum per capita somewhere else other than gasoline.

This suggests that the South is heavily reliant on gasoline. California also ranks worse here (41st at 53.6%). Arizona is also the second worst at a shade over 60%.

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One more I did was on distillate fuel. Now, this one is tough to read into, because it includes both diesel fuel and heating oil. But we can try to decipher some things:



As you might imagine, New England is quite low in the rankings thanks to their heavy dependance on heating oil (and also explains the low overall rankings of NH, VT, and ME). I imagine this also explains Wyoming's overall low ranking, as it by far uses more distillate fuel than any other state (3.2 gallons per day per person). I'm guessing it's the heavy freight traffic that goes through the state. That would also explain why a lot of the Plains States rank so low overall, as well.

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I could put up a couple more if you want me to (total energy beyond petroleum, jet fuel, liquefied petroleum), but hopefully this gives us enough stuff to ponder for a while.

Good post. Lots of good, interesting information.

I imagine these charts include the petroleum used in ports and to fuel ships? That would go a long way in explaining Texas, Lousiana, and to a point Florida. Actually, maybe it wouldn't, but I am still curious.

If I could just beat with a stick every dickface who drives a 7 miles/gallon Hummer in Dallas...

You would need a very sturdy stick and a large helping of muscular endurance.

How about starting with the ones who feel they are entitled to taking up two parking places by parking diagonally or strattling the line?



Green Habit,

Would it be possible to see a chart of gasoline/petrol consumption per registered vehicle? I think that might shed some light on your outliers.

Ooh, that's a thought. I don't know where I'd find registered vehicle stats as of 2001, though.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/hs01/mv1.htm