Not only petroleum consumption continues to increase. So does coal and natural gas.
While we reduce the amount of coal we burn here in the USA, India and China are increasing.
India is now the largest importer of US coal. Trains leave WY and other mines everyday going to Tacoma. To be loaded on a vessel to India and to some extent China.
Although China gets more coal from Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia. China actually burns mostly its own coal. Although it is not as good as the coal from other sources.
I think 1800’s the West Coast US imported Australian coal on schooners. At very low tide, and some sand washed away, the wooden bones of one of them appears on the beach at Rockaway, OR.
You burn what you have.
It’s an interesting exercise in understanding how money has and is losing its meaning.
Not value. Meaning.
If coal was a money measured reality, India would leave it in the ground and buy all of it from elsewhere. The issue is the joules require less joules to get to the power plant when they travel shorter distance.
So you burn what you have. Not what you can pay for. If you have it, it’s free.