National Security

There was an interesting article today about the energy balance of trade in the United States. After two decades of ever increasing oil imports, the United States is becoming somewhat less addicted to foreign oil. Over the last five years, there has been a significant improvement in the oil deficit in the U.S. Oil imports, which constituted 61% of total oil consumption in 2005, fell to 49% of oil consumption in 2010. Even more significantly, imports from Canada and Mexico, already representing 30% of our imports in 2005, actually rose over this period, so that oil imports from overseas areas, in some of the more unstable parts of the world, have been cut almost in half over the last five years.

I bring this up because Rideshare has the potential to make another significant contribution to reducing our oil use. Maybe this belongs in our Meet Rideshare series, but we’ve already closed that so I’m just going to fire it up here. How much can Rideshare reduce oil imports?

The United States uses some 9 million barrels per day of gasoline, as well as 4 million barrels more per day of diesel fuel. It also uses 7 million barrels per day for other uses, including jet fuel for airplanes. As you may recall from our previous post, corporate commuting represents some 50% of the vehicle miles driven in a major city, or somewhere there abouts, but obviously much less in suburban or rural areas. On the other hand, some of the vehicle miles driven represent trucks using diesel fuel to ship goods. So corporate commuting actually represents substantially more than half of the gasoline consumption in a major city. Let’s ballpark it and say that corporate commuting accounts for half of the gasoline used in the United States every year, which is probably not a ludicrously out of line estimate. That is 4.5 million barrels per day. Or, more than we import from Canada and Mexico combined. Put another way, if those 4.5 million barrels per day were to somehow stop being used, the United States would ONLY need to import oil from Canada and Mexico, without relying on the Persian Gulf, Russia, or Venezuela at all.

Obviously, even if everyone started using Rideshare the number would not fall to zero. But this gives you an idea of what a large proportion of total oil use corporate commuting represents.
Rideshare is initially aiming for a 1-1 passenger-driver ratio in its carpools, though over time it hopes to bring this higher, and vanpools will have higher ratios right from the off. Transforming half of corporate commuters into passengers will cut the number of cars on the road in rush hour by half but cut oil use by considerably more than half, since drivers will spend much less time idling in traffic. Idling contributes about a third of total energy consumption in corporate commuting according to our calculations. So let’s assume that a 50% cut in drivers reduces idling by 75%(some idling is due to accidents, construction, etc.) This would mean that each percentage point of market penetration nationwide by Rideshare would reduce oil usage by 30,000 barrels per day, with a ceiling potential of 3 million barrels per day if we could somehow achieve 100% market penetration. Even 50% market penetration would reduce oil consumption by 1.5 million barrels per day, which is more than the United States imports from Saudi Arabia.

So, clearly, while it can’t do the whole job, Rideshare can make a substantial contribution to the U.S. national security by reducing our reliance on foreign oil considerably.