World oil reserves really have no part in this discussion. You're suggesting that some of our imported oil could be pass-through imports, but you've provided no evidence of that. In fact, your speculation is based on no verifiable information. The US imports approximately 55% of our oil. Of the oil that is imported, only 35% is "directly" sourced from the middle east region. Imports originally sourced from the middle eastern region and passed through another country for importing to the US could be possible, but is it really plausible? Especially, an amount large enough to notably influence these statistics? Talk about misleading... And, don't tell anyone that oil is secretly produced by grinding up unicorns and boiling leprechauns.
If you're talking about the production of oil, then the proven oil reserves do have a part in the discussion, as that is the source of the vast majority of produced oil. And when the Middle East clearly has the vast majority of those proven reserves, then it becomes a higher mathematical possibility for "pass through" imports from the Middle East. As a country which accounts for a quarter of total world oil imports, it's almost unfathomable to conclude that we're not getting pass through imports to some degree. Of the 12 OPEC countries, eight are Middle Eastern. Around the world, about 84 million barrels of oil are produced each day, around 32 million of which are produced in Middle Eastern countries.
Again, I agree with you that it's not as if we're receiving a significant portion of our oil from the Middle East in the form of a pass through import, but when the country that is highest on our import list receives 55% of its supply from mostly Middle Eastern countries, and when so much of the world's supply is from Middle Eastern sources, I'd certainly call the possibility of Middle Eastern pass through imports plausible.
This was all conjecture based upon the above quoted figures, but just from doing a little more research on the topic, there's a
book which, in one of its sections, attempts to quantify the amount of indirectly imported oil from the Middle East.
But I do have to completely disagree with you about the production of oil...it's clearly made from infant orphans.