How many barrels of oil have Americans consumed since...well...forever?

Question

I'm looking for the all-time consumption of petroleum products in the United States. The Energy Information Administration is usually my source for this kind of info, but their data in this case only goes back to January 1963. I've tried searching on Google, but haven't found anything.

Answer 1

That's because nobody used to have any real idea how much oil was at a site they were drilling.  It's estimated there were 100s of millions of barrels in places like Pennsylvania and Indiana.  Who knows what Texas and California's figures were a 100 years ago.  We do know they were so inefficient that they used to lose about half of what was down there in the reclamation process.  That's why they've started drilling alot of the old sites again to squeeze out the last few thousand barrels down there.  I would bet the total figure is somewhere in the billions of barrels.  Post it online though if you're ever able to estimate it.  Start in the 19th century when petroleum replaced whale oil for Kerosene use.

Answer 2

Enough oil has been used to make higher gas prices due to scarcity, & that's A LOT.

I don't think we'll ever know how much oil there was in the first place, before we started using it, or how much we used since the first time.