In descending order, the country suppliers (2005 data) of crude to the United States are:
Canada -- 18%
Mexico -- 15%
Nigeria -- 12%
Saudi Arabia -- 12%
Venezuela -- 10%
Angola -- 6%
Iraq -- 5%
Algeria -- 3%
Colombia -- 3%
Ecuador -- 3%
Kuwait -- 2%
United Kingdom -- 2%
Equatorial Guinea -- 1%
Norway -- 1%
In alphabetical order, the members of OPEC, including the year the country joined OPEC, are:
Algeria -- 1969
Indonesia -- 1962
Iran -- 1960
Iraq -- 1960
Kuwait -- 1960
Libya -- 1962
Nigeria -- 1971
Qatar -- 1961
Saudi Arabia -- 1960
United Arab Emirates -- 1967
Venezuela -- 1960
So what is OPEC?
OPEC stands for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The Middle East countries exported 29%
of the crude oil in 2004, North America exported 19%, and 52% was evenly distributed from other oil exporters around the world.
Of the non-OPEC countries, Russia, Norway, Mexico and Kazakhstan are the largest oil exporters.
OPEC's fundamental purpose is that any country with a substantial net export of crude petroleum, which has fundamentally
similar interests to those of Member Countries, may become a Full Member of the Organization, if accepted by a majority of
three-fourths of Full Members, including the concurring votes of all Founder Members.
OPEC was established in 1960. Its first meeting was held in Baghdad, Iraq. Since 1965 its international headquarters
have been in Vienna, Austria.
for more information, go to:
It didn't take very long after Quint and I were married to realize that I couldn't live in our house without
having osmosis ala reinheimer rub off on me -- when it came to news and politics about all things corrupt and
stinky.
These are the people I call mega-squats who slink their way through halls of congress to find their
little seats on whatever sides of the aisle that they hang out on.
For instance, a CNN poll that was released on
Thursday (today) says that half of all Americans believe that most members of Congress are corrupt.
Can you believe
it!
Then think about this -- more than a third of the people polled think that their own representative is crooked.
This
poll was conducted by Opinion Research Corp. -- 1,012 Americans were polled last Friday and Saturday. (Margin of error is
plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.)
You might still be able to get the PDF of the poll details at:
I have some links to some really interesting sites that I'm going to put on the main web page. I invite you
to check them out.
Other web sites that may help you get information about your favorite candidates include:
What I find confusing is this -- with the high percentage of people who think congresspersons are corrupt, why
in the world do we continue to re-elect the incumbents more than 90% of the time!!
So read up on your candidates
and go to the polls on election day. I hope you find someone worthwhile to vote for.
