S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve). The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the largest stockpile of government-owned emergency crude oil in the world. SPR provides the President with a powerful response option should a disruption in commercial oil supplies threaten the U.S. economy. It also allows the United States to meet part of its International Energy Agency obligation to maintain emergency oil stocks, and it provides a national defense fuel reserve. As of April 6, 2004 the inventory was at 652.1 million barrels of oil, which is approximately a 60-day supply for the United States. The storage sites are located in underground salt cavern along the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf of Mexico was picked because it provides the most flexible means for connecting to the Nation's commercial oil transport network. .
Over the last four weeks, about 14.6 million barrels per day of crude oil have been run through U.S. refineries. Gasoline, which is one of the main products refined from crude oil, accounts for approximately sixteen percent of energy consumed in the United States. According to the Department of Energy, one barrel is 42 gallons of oil. Out of those 42 gallons it produces between 19 and 20 gallons of gasoline. So to do a quick calculation: 14.6 (million barrels per day) * 19.5 (gallons of gas per barrel) = 284.7 (million gallons of gas per day). If you then take into consideration that there is approximately 100 million households in the United States, that averages out to (284.7/100) only 2.847 gallons of gasoline used by each household everyday. .
Now that we have done a calculation to get the average of how much each household consume on gasoline let's breakdown the price of gas and see exactly what our money is paying for. The price for a gallon of gasoline can be broken down into 5 sections. .
1) Crude Oil - This is the biggest portion of the cost of gas. It averages approximately forty-three percent.
