California is the second largest consumers of gasoline and diesel fuels in the world, surpassed only by the United States as a whole. In 2006, Californians consumed an estimated 20 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel on the state's roadways, an increase of nearly 50 percent over the last 20 years.
Doing the calculations, if you estimate 23 gallons of gasoline from one barrel of oil, that gives you:
20 billion gallons of gasoline in 2006 ÷ (23 gallons of gasoline/barrel of oil) ÷ (365 days/year)
≈ 2.4 million barrels of oil/day in 2006
(i.e. exactly within your estimate)
In 2006 China's oil consumption was estimated at 6.3 million barrels per day.
(I assume that since then China's oil consumption has grown much faster than California's.)
Don't understand why or how that report states that California is the second largest consumers of gasoline and diesel fuels in the world, surpassed only by the United States as a whole. Cynicism is intellectual treason.
Light distillates consist of aviation and motor gasolines and light distillate feedstock.
Middle distillates consist of jet, heating kerosenes, gas and diesel oils (including marine bunkers).
So, China uses inordinate amount of oil as fuel, which skews the comparisons. California probably uses even less oil as fuel, further biasing the comparison based on population alone.
