An American and Canadian Crude Look at Oil

Blogaulaire suspects (backed by careful observation) that the average reader of Cheap Priceless Editions is both a practical person (always on the look-out for a good deal) and a rather bookish person . . perhaps with literary tastes, endowed with a progressive outlook, worldview, et cetera.

Does looking at raw numbers give you the hives? Are you reaching for an ointment for your urticaria, after reading figures for economic projections? Relax, there won't be a test, not even answers from me about any of this.

Call the STATISTICS portion of this post laconic. Terse news. It gets right to the point of all the rest.


We are just introducing -- call it a game, call it a word feature (more on that in upcoming posts as the blog here evolves on its own course - so STAY TUNED TO THIS WEB ADDRESS). But first, the eye candy:

February 18 : Chinese New Year
Celebrated
on the grounds of
the world famous
Calgary Exhibition & Stampede

The Biggest Game in US - CAN Trade -- PETROLEUM

Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries:
Highlights Released; February 16, 2007

"Preliminary monthly data on the origins of crude oil imports in December 2006 has been released and it shows that three countries have each exported more than 1.20 million barrels per day to the United States.

Including those countries, a total of five countries exported over 1.00 million barrels per day of crude oil to the United States (see table below). The top five exporting countries accounted for 69 percent of United States crude oil imports in December while the top ten sources accounted for approximately 88 percent of all U.S. crude oil imports.

The top sources of US crude oil imports for December were Canada (1.829 million barrels per day), Saudi Arabia (1.471 million barrels per day), Mexico (1.245 million barrels per day), Venezuela (1.045 million barrels per day), and Nigeria (1.010 million barrels per day).

The rest of the top ten sources, in order, were Angola (0.610 million barrels per day), Algeria (0.421 million barrels per day), Iraq (0.419 million barrels per day), Ecuador (0.254 million barrels per day), and Kuwait (0.163 million barrels per day).

Total crude oil imports averaged 9.584 million barrels per day in December, which is a decrease of 0.253 million barrels per day from November 2006.

Canada remained the largest exporter of total petroleum products in December, exporting 2.409 million barrels per day to the United States, which was a slight decrease from last month (2.598 thousand barrels per day). The second largest exporter of total petroleum products was Saudi Arabia with 1.491 million barrels per day."

What do you say to all that? (Isn't it a bit odd to be reading EIA (Energy Information Administration) data practucally the day it's released?

The major exporters of oil to the US are taking in tons of cash - they are not giving this stuff away! So: if you happen to be in the commerce of words, images, books, new ideas and/or services to the people interested in same, remember the following . . .

. . . the best time to sell a farmer a new tractor is after he has harvested a bumper crop . . .

In fact, if you've got anything to sell, to offer, to provide and it happens to be right after a bumper year for growing (we're seeing fewer and fewer of them), it is the farmer who will seek you out with the cash burning through his or her very pockets.

Rod Proudfoot (far right) congratulates Rod B. and wife Dorothy!
The Winner of (Stampede Casino's) January "Casino and a Movie" draw.
Rod and Dorothy took home a 32" LCD TV and - Sony Soundsaround system. -Worth over $2,000!-

Everybody, by the way, is dependent upon oil. If you live in Mahattan (Blogaulaire is certain) then on your own streets you are seeing more oilmen dressing their part than I am just sitting here in Montreal. Oil money at the top gathers with other money, and Manhattan is still at the top, though one wonders for how much longer.

People here in Canada with little things to sell, things no bigger than a flat screen TV or monitor, things like books, are catching on to a general migration of young and not-so-young residents and members of the active workforce who are headed 'out West to Alberta' where all the jobs are. And the rest of us are saying that this energy dependence on oil can't keep going on and on without the world sinking into its own slime ball. And the people still keep Heading West.

Alberta ex-pats have always been a counter-culture theme in Montreal. These recent transfuges are less and less Bohemian, more and more bourgeois in lifestyle. Some oil patch ex-pats even have enough money to buy books from local used bookstore owners . .


Learn the language(s) of the next frontier, not the last one. Every economic development is social change. Every exploration of a thriving, dying or recycled technology requires a new vocabulary, a different lexicon of terms.

From what we all learned about export-import of oil up top, for the 5 biggest providers of petroleum to the US market, the Official Languages in the exporting nations (the ones taking in the cash as price-per-barrel rises) break down as English (2); Spanish (2); Arabic (1). If we crudely ask whether the transfer of wealth from importing states to exporters represents a shift from one linguistic centre of gravity to another.

As a Can-Am myself, aware that "American" means English, French and Spanish already, (for me at least) the numbers look totally status quo ante . . no big shift, no surprises.

There will be upcoming demographic shifts within nations, regions, and hemispheres toward the world capitals of oil production. It may, eventually, be bust and boom.

In terms of the publishing and book trade, I think that the biggest question is not about the expansion of literacy generally. Arabic, Spanish and English as spoken and read in the Middle East and Central Asia or in Central and South America, and in Western Africa ... well everywhere people will become literate. I think we should concentrate on how functional literacy will change here at home and we should be sensitive to the competition for reader in places like Canada's western provinces.
Will a literacy boom, i.e., more active readers, happen out West? Or will the people moving West just take their satellite dishes with them or have their cable service contracts switched over from Ontario and Quebec to new homes in Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia? And for those who do read on a printed page, does the book trade have anything particularly unique to offer people as this demographic shift emerges? Tentatively, all my answers are Yes, Yes and Yes.

Will it be a boom or an echo?

We Call Our Bus Patty Patchwork

//sarcasm//
This application may not have much bandwidth but it moves faster in P2P downloads than the legacy site servers in its class.

It's like distributed computing using a needle and thread for modular interface configuration. //END SARCASM//

Two quilting buddies in southeastern Iowa wanted to open a quilting shop but couldn't decide in which town to settle. So they bought a bus for $1,200 and took their fabric on the road.

All this commercial linking in crazy-quilt patterns could spread virally, who knows?

Two quilting buddies in southeastern Iowa wanted to open a quilting shop but couldn't decide in which town to settle. So they bought a bus for $1,200 and took their fabric on the road.


More than two years ago, quilting buddies Gay Murphy and Kris Kelderman were pondering the idea of owning a quilting store when they retired.

"Being in rural Iowa, it was kind of hard to think of a place to put a quilting shop," said Murphy, 43, who lives in Eddyville, in southeastern Iowa. Kelderman, 52, is from nearby Kirkville.

That's when Murphy's childhood memories of visiting mobile libraries while living in Des Moines** sparked the idea: How about a quilt shop on wheels?

Their business, Patchwork Peddlers, has been on the move since January 2005, delivering quilting supplies to customers in rural Iowa. They also regularly park at the Hy-Vee parking lot in Albia on Mondays, and at the Hy-Vee in Ottumwa on Tuesdays.

The two women have also taken their green 1984 Ford Bluebird bus to visit quilt guilds in the state, as well as in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Minnesota.

"We call our bus Patty Patchwork," Murphy said.

** - Blogaulaire: 'Been there, done that; glad it inspired someone.' And I was paid 69 cents an hour to travel with and reshelve the mobile library - not bad for a 14-year-old kid at the time. Not as good as caddying, but better than delivering newspapers.

pps: //edit added// The more I think about this Des Moines Register article, the more questions I have. Murphy and Kelderman retire 'kinda yung' wouldn't you say? So I wonder from what employment each 'retired'. Plus, they landed a damn good set of wheels for the price if they can buzz around eastern Iowa every week and go to quilt guilds from Oklahoma to Minnesota whenever they please.

A book-bus that is or was at one time operated by a non-profit group once came to a conference and book sale I attended. The vehicle was very special because it was modified to hold handcrafted chapbooks to promote the work of poets and artisans. So the load was very much lighter than with most mobile lending libraries. If anyone here know more about this, please post a link in your comment. I'll see what I can find on this end. Already, the first day it is posted, this article has proved to be very popular - several hits from interested persons.