Quick: Name The World's Fourth-Largest Consumer Of Gasoline -- December 28, 2016

Disclaimer: in a long note like this with a lot of numbers and a lot of arithmetic involved, there are likely to be typographical and factual errors. In addition, many of the numbers were rounded. If this information is important to you, go to the source. 

Updates

December 31, 2016: from Platts. Data points:

• Mexico's record-low refiner production and growing consumer demand: pushed US gasoline exports there to a new high in October
• gasoline exports to Mexico climbed 1.86 million bbls to 12.08 million bbls in October
• the previous peak was 11.42 million bbls in December, 2010
• Mexico is by far the largest importer of US gasoline; take 46% of the 177 million bbls of finished gasoline exported by the US in October, 2016
• exports push the price of gasoline higher
• outright price of Gulf Coast pipeline-delivered conventional gasoline, $1.71, highest price since August 18, 2015
• prime reason for increased exports to Mexico: chronic underinvestment in downstream investments over the years
• Mexico's refined product production is at its lowest point since Pemex started tracking data in 1995
• this, despite domestic sales climbing to a record high
• Mexico is expanding its main import terminal, the port of Tuxpan on Mexico's east coast

Original Post

Gasoline consumption by country:

This was the ranking of gasoline consumption provided by the US EIA for 2012 (population as of 2014; consumption per capita):

• USA: 8.7 million bbls/day (325 million; 0.027 bbls/day/person)
• China: 1.9 million bbls/day (1.4 billion; 0.0016 bbls/day/person)
• Japan: 1 million bbls/day (127 million; 0.008 bbls/day/person)
• Russia: 800,000 bbls/day (147 million; 0.005 bbls/day/person
• Canada: 791,000 bbls/day (36 million; 0.02 bbls/day/person -- very similar to the US)
• Mexico: 777,000 bbls/day (122 million; 0.006 bbls/day/person -- about the same as Russia)
• Brazil: 530,000 bbls/day (207 million; 0.0026 -- in the same ballpark as China)
• Indonesia: 530,000 bbls/day (260 million; 0.002 -- slightly more than China)
• Saudi Arabia: 482,000 bbls/day (33 million; 0.015 -- half that of the US)
• Germany: 427,000 bbls/day (82 million; 0.005 -- same as Russia?)
• India: 368,000 bbls/day (1.3 billion; 0.0003 -- half as much as Mexico)

That was 2012.

Now, in 2016, what country was #4? Hint: it borders the US.

Hint it isn't Canada.

Mexico, in 2016, has leap-frogged / lept-frog (?) to the fourth position.

Mexico imports as much as 960,000 bbls/day from the US, almost equal to Japan's consumption back in 2012 which suggests to me that by this time next year, Mexico could be in 3rd place, just a hop, skip, and a jump from US refineries in Texas and Louisiana.

If President Trump doesn't get help from Mexico to build "that wall," he could easily increase the tariff of gasoline -- a value-added tax -- going south, but keeping the tariff less than the cost of transporting gasoline from Europe. Oh, there are so many things to think about. President Trump will probably put Rick Perry in charge of this.

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Just Out Of Curiosity

Consumption of gasoline per capita: Texas vs California? 2014:

Texas: 316,378,000 bbls for the year year; population: 26.96 million -- 0.032 bbls/day/person
California: 348,451,000 bbls for the year; population: 38.8 million -- 0.025 bbls/day/person

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A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century

William F. Buckley, Jr

c. 2016

An anthology of 50+ eulogies of great Americans by William F. Buckley

The first eulogy: Dwight Eisenhower

It begins:

During his lifetime he had his detractors. There are those who oppose Dwight Eisenhower because he was the man who defeated Adlai Stevenson.

In their judgment it was profanation for anyone to stand in the way of Adlai Stevenson. And so, when Eisenhower was inaugurated, they took up, and forever maintained, a jeremiad on America the theme of which was: America is a horrible country because a banal and boring general with not an idea in his head gets to beat a scintillating intellectual who is in tune with his the future.

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The Geo-Political Page

For the archives, the foreign policy bookends of the Obama administration:

In the Obama administration's waning days, global challenges to American interests abound. In Syria, which will be a bloody stain on the reputations of Barack Obama and John Kerry, the killing continues. The effort to free Mosul from ISIS is slowing. The rise of Iranian influence in the Gulf and the Levant, of China in Asia and the western Pacific, and of Putin's Russia in both Europe and the Middle East, all continue. One might have thought any of these could be the subject of a final address by the president or the secretary of state.

But one would have been wrong. John Kerry delivered what is probably the last major speech of the Obama administration Wednesday, and its subject was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and especially the growth of Israeli settlements. So the Obama administration ends where it began: obsessed with Israelis and Palestinians as if their struggle were the key to peace in the entire region, and with construction of homes in settlements and in Jerusalem as if it were the major roadblock to a peace agreement.

Secretary of State John Kerry's final Mideast speech in which he summarized the problems in the Mideast and the biggest obstacle precluding peace in the region: Israel building settlements on a former kibbutz. 

The speech was given on the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth month of the eighth year of the Obama presidency. There are 22.5 days left in the Obama presidency.