My own understanding was that fuel should refer to petroleum in general; if it referred only to refined processed end-stage fuel, we'd reach conclusions like 'Iran is a massive net fuel importer' (because while Iran exports plenty of oil, they don't have the working refineries to turn it into gasoline etc). So for me the relevant part of that article would be
Total net crude and product imports fell 11 percent from a year earlier to 8.436 million barrels a day, the lowest level since 1995, department data showed.
Going through expiring predictions reminded me. Just as we did for 2010 and 2011, it's time for LessWrong to make its beliefs pay rent and give hostages to fortune in making predictions for events in 2012 and beyond.
Suggested topics include: Methods of Rationality updates (eg. "will there be any?"), economic benchmarks (price of gold has been an educational one for me this past year), medical advances (but be careful not to be too optimistic!), personal precommitments (signing up for cryonics?), being curmudgeonly about self-improvement, making daring predictions about the future of AGI, and so on.
As before, please be fairly specific. I intend to put most predictions on PredictionBook.com and it'd be nice if they weren't too hard to judge in the future.
(If you want advice on making good predictions, I've tried to write up a few useful heuristics I've learned. So far in the judging process, I've done pretty well this year, although I'm a little annoyed I got a Yemen prediction right but for the wrong reasons.)