BRAD PLUMER links to a Wall Street Journalstory on Saudi Arabia's increasing consumption of its own oil output. The story reads:

With domestic electricity demand rising 10% per year in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom now devours more than a quarter of its oil production—nearly three million barrels per day. International Energy Agency figures show that Saudi Arabia now consumes more oil than Germany, an industrialized country with triple the population and an economy nearly five times as large.

The Economist actually ran a piece on this last week which came complete with snazzy map:

The really striking thing in our story is the nature of rising Saudi consumption:

Saudi power-generating capacity has doubled in the past decade. Partly this is to mitigate the fearful heat: according to a report from Chatham House, a think-tank, air-conditioning units soak up half of all power generated at peak consumption periods. The second relates to economic structure. It takes energy to produce energy: pumps must be powered and vast quantities of seawater desalinated. Aramco, the Saudi state oil company, sucks up nearly 10% of the country's energy output. Attempts to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil, gas and petrochemicals have not gone far. The third reason for rising Gulf consumption is the inefficiency of domestic energy markets. Some 65% of Saudi electricity is generated using black gold, even as successive price shocks and the relative inefficiency of oil generation have seen it all but phased out in rich countries. Oil is used with such profligacy because domestic consumption is massively subsidised. According to the International Energy Agency, global oil subsidies added up to $192 billion in 2010. OPEC countries accounted for $121 billion of the total... Saudi Arabia is trying to develop nuclear and solar energy. But its fleet of oil-fired power stations will keep going for years. And as Mark Lewis of Deutsche Bank points out, two more big ones are now being built. On current trends the kingdom would become a net importer of oil by 2038 (unlikely though that is).

Saudi Arabia uses as much oil per person as America, largely to run oil-fired power plants to run domestic air conditioners. And the more of its oil siphoned off for such uses, the less cushion there is in the world's oil supply. That's a big problem now but is becoming less of one. America and Europe are cutting consumption and massively scaling up production. Saudi Arabia's oil thirst merely deepens its dependence on a finite resource, suggesting that the inevitable day of reckoning will be a difficult one indeed.