A point that bears repeating: Washington, Oregon, and Idaho produce virtually no natural gas, and absolutely no petroleum. So virtually every dollar the region spends on oil and gas gets immediately siphoned out of the region’s economy—which leaves less money circulating locally, among the region’s residents and businesses.

The recent energy price spikes made me wonder: how much money is that, exactly? It’s hard to say, exactly, since prices and imports are in constant flux. But in round numbers, it’s about $17 billion per year: $9.6 billion in Washington, $5.2 in Oregon, and $2.1 billion in Idaho.

That’s about $1,500 per person per year; and about $537 each second.

And if you have javascript enabled on your computer, you can see the numbers rack up below:

Dollars sent out of the Northwest states
for oil and gas, year to date, 2006

Total, NW states:

0

Washington:

0

Oregon:

0

Idaho:

0

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