Using data from MarineTraffic (which is definitely worth a click through), the New York Times has created this terrific animation showing the flow of oil tankers from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world from May 15 to June 15, 2019.

Here's a screenshot:

About 20% of the world's supply of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a tiny passage located between Iran (north) and the UAE (south). See above.

The article also has a number of other charts that speak to changing supply and demand patterns. Note the US, China, and Iran.

Here are the top oil producers (total petroleum liquids) and the top crude oil exporters in 2018 (both are measured in millions of barrels a day):

And here are the top oil consumers ranked by 2016 data (total consumption of petroleum and other liquids):

Images/Charts: New York Times

I was reading this morning about Richard Anderson's efforts to stem Amtrak's operating losses, and the controversies surrounding those moves. Richard Anderson became President and CEO of Amtrak in 2017. Before that he was the CEO of Delta Air Lines.

One of the things that Anderson is trying to do to improve profitability is shrink or eliminate some of the company's long-distance train routes and instead focus on the more frequent (and profitable) short haul routes. Here is a map from the WSJ that I thought was really interesting:

The only profitable corridor in the network (black line above) is the one running from Boston down to Washington D.C. The long-distance routes running west from Chicago (1, 2 and 3 above) are the lines with the biggest operating losses (thick red lines above).

All of this makes sense. The northeast corridor works because it has the population density and because the trips are short enough that rail is an appropriate substitute for air travel. The northeast is one giant megalopolis.

The controversy is that, despite being unprofitable, there's a segment of the market that still uses and likes many of these long-distance passenger routes. So politically, it's a challenge to eliminate them. But there are also pressures from Congress to have Amtrak cover its operating costs.

We should also not forget that Amtrak was formed in 1971 precisely because all of the private companies that had been previously operating these lines were bleeding money. Highways and airlines had taken the passengers. And so this was a way of preserving passenger rail in the US.

I am curious what all of you think about this. To what extent should these unprofitable lines be propped up by the government? Let me know in the comment section below.