Corn Commentary

Big Oil Fills Up More Than The Tank

With a oil at (yet again!) a new record high today of $122 per barrel, would-be parents might want to think about the implications a little one will have on their pocketbooks.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources estimates each person uses about 7,800 pounds of petroleum a year–more than 28 barrels of oil. In a lifetime, each American will use 585,000 pounds or 2,100 barrels of petroleum.

At $122 per barrel that’s $256,200 per person. Where’s all that petroleum going, you ask?

Well Little Johnny’s diapers are composed of 30 percent petroleum and if he’s like the average baby, he is going to go through nearly 6,000 diapers before being potty trained. More than 50 pounds of petroleum feedstocks are used to produce disposable diapers for Little Johnny. That’s one-fifth of a barrel per year.

By the time Little Johnny turns 10, he will have used about 730 crayons to draw and color with. Those crayons contain paraffin wax, a petroleum product.

Toothpaste, deodorant, cologne and detergents all contain petroleum products, and families buy these in abundance. Deodorant, for example, contains synthetic fragrances, of which 95 percent are made from petroleum. And if every family replaced just one 28-ounce bottle of petroleum based dish detergent with a vegetable-based product we could save 82,000 barrels of oil

Then the teen years hit and Little Johnny’s cell phone, computer and cars all gobble up petroleum in the form of plastics and fuel.

Keep in mind though, that what you can make with petroleum chemicals you can make with ethanol chemicals–and in a cleaner, greener manner.