Scarce Oil? U.S. Has 60 Times More Than Obama Claims

[wise1ray]

When he was running for the Oval Office four years ago amid $4-a-gallon gasoline prices, then-Sen. Barack Obama dismissed the idea of expanded oil production as a way to relieve the pain at the pump.

"Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling," he said. "America still has only 3% of the world's oil reserves." Which meant, he said, that the U.S. couldn't affect global oil prices.

It's the same rhetoric President Obama is using now, as gas prices hit $4 again, except now he puts the figure at 2%.

"With only 2% of the world's oil reserves, we can't just drill our way to lower gas prices," he said. "Not when we consume 20% of the world's oil."

The claim makes it appear as though the U.S. is an oil-barren nation, perpetually dependent on foreign oil and high prices unless we can cut our own use and develop alternative energy sources like algae.

U.S. Awash In Oil

But the figure Obama uses — proved oil reserves — vastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, the country is awash in vast quantities — enough to meet all the country's oil needs for hundreds of years.

The U.S. has 22.3 billion barrels of proved reserves, a little less than 2% of the entire world's proved reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration. But as the EIA explains, proved reserves "are a small subset of recoverable resources," because they only count oil that companies are currently drilling for in existing fields.

When you look at the whole picture, it turns out that there are vast supplies of oil in the U.S., according to various government reports. Among them:

At least 86 billion barrels of oil in the Outer Continental Shelf yet to be discovered, according to the government's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

About 24 billion barrels in shale deposits in the lower 48 states, according to EIA.

Up to 2 billion barrels of oil in shale deposits in Alaska's North Slope, says the U.S. Geological Survey.

Up to 12 billion barrels in ANWR, according to the USGS.

As much as 19 billion barrels in the Utah tar sands, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

Then, there's the massive Green River Formation in Wyoming, which according to the USGS contains a stunning 1.4 trillion barrels of oil shale — a type of oil released from sedimentary rock after it's heated.

[mudslinger]

Are you saying Obama really doesn't want to have energy independence, how shocking.

[wise1ray]

We have much more oil than Saudi Arabia, 1.4 Trillion barrels of recoverable oil with existing technology. We have enough to last 200 years with no imports. It is madness to not exploit this resource and pay down our $14 Trillion national debt.


You can't fix stupid but you can vote it out......

[sweetwater5s9]

There are pinheads that believe Obama... Yikes!   

[mudslinger]

You can only vote it out if the election is fair, now we know how Obama and Acorn operate so you never are sure of the outcome.

[wise1ray]

U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006
Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains, lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world; more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this mother load of oil why are we dependant of imported oil?

We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth. Here are the official estimates:

- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia,
- 18-times as much oil as Iraq,
- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait,
- 22-times as much oil as Iran,
- 500-times as much oil as Yemen - and it's all right here in the Western United States.

[sweetwater5s9]

Obama has more snake oil to sell than Exxon has crude to refine...

[duke_john]

I listened to Larry Kudlow yesterday.  He called Obama's statistics "cognitive dissonance" before saying Obama was outright lying.

[hoosier_daddy]

bullshit....here is the real deal, from a real source, the Houston Chronicle...
 
The United States' rapidly declining crude oil supply has made a stunning about-face, shredding federal oil projections and putting energy independence in sight of some analyst forecasts.
After declining to levels not seen since the 1940s, U.S. crude production began rising again in 2009. Drilling rigs have rushed into the nation's oil fields, suggesting a surge in domestic crude is on the horizon.
The number of rigs in U.S. oil fields has more than quadrupled in the past three years to 1,272, according to the Baker Hughes rig count. Including those in natural gas fields, the United States now has more rigs at work than the entire rest of the world.
"It's staggering," said Marshall Adkins, who directs energy research for the financial services firm Raymond James. "If we continue growing anywhere near that pace and keep squeezing demand out of the system, that puts you in a world where we are not importing oil in 10 years."
There are doubts that energy independence is that close. But many say the booming shale oil fields in Texas and North Dakota and the growth of deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico will allow the nation to cut its reliance on oil imports significantly over the next couple of decades.
Last month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration upgraded its forecast of crude production in 2025 to 6.4 million barrels per day - 1 million barrels more than were pumped in 2010.
Previously, the EIA had projected the U.S. would peak at 6 million barrels in 2022.
"The growth that we've seen in shale, that's one of the biggest changes that's contributing to our outlook," said Dana Van-Wagener, a research analyst for the agency. "It's evolving so quickly. We weren't anticipating enough growth."
Crude prices stable
By the EIA's forecast, the United States will challenge Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer when crude and other forms of liquid petroleum are included. But the U.S. is also the world's top oil consumer, demanding nearly 20 million barrels a day. So even with an oil boom, the nation still falls far short of its energy demands.
The technology that fueled the national shale gas rush is moving into oil fields. The pairing of fossil fuel production techniques called horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing allowed companies to access previously hard-to-reach natural gas trapped in dense shale rock.
The rush has unleashed a flood of natural gas onto the U.S. market, causing price to dive and making some gas wells uneconomical. Companies have started to close natural gas wells and pull rigs out of gas fields.
Meanwhile, crude oil prices have remained high, with the domestic benchmark West Texas Intermediate price rising 93 cents to $103.24 on Friday.
Pumping crude out of shale rock is more expensive and difficult than getting at natural gas, said Eric Potter, program director for energy research at the University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology.
Oil molecules are larger and harder to squeeze through the cracks created by hydraulic fracturing. But the high price of crude makes it worthwhile for many companies.
"With natural gas prices being as low as they are, your company could go out of business if you don't manage this carefully," Potter said. "People are moving quickly to get into these oil plays. It's a matter of their existence."
The Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, the Permian Basin in West Texas, and the Bakken Shale in North Dakota have been hubs of the domestic crude boom. They now make up about 40 percent of the nation's land-based oil production, noted Adkins, the Raymond James analyst. He projects that proportion will grow to two-thirds by 2015.
Fields underestimated
Adkins says the Energy Information Administration is vastly underestimating the rapid growth of those oil fields. He believes that crude oil production in the United States will reach 9.1 million barrels by 2015, some 45 percent more than the EIA's forecast.
The reason for the varying projections about the nation's crude potential is uncertainty about how much oil is underground and whether technological advances will make it reachable.
That also causes debate about future crude oil prices.
Adkins, for example, says the rising production will help reverse the surging price of oil, pushing it down to $90 per barrel next year.

[hoosier_daddy]

imagine somebody so fucking stupid they actually quote Larry Kudlow....amazing...

[sweetwater5s9]

“The left says it takes 5 to 10 years to develop an oil resource” so how exactly did Obama do it in 3?

[duke_john]

Imagine someone so fucking stupid he not only thinks Obama is a great president, but also has no clue about the rules of capitalization.