Exposing the 2% Oil Reserves Myth

[Baldy]

Exposing the 2 percent oil reserves myth

To refute Obama's straw man argument that the US only has 2% of the world's proven oil reserves.

In 1944, the US had 20 billion barrels of "proven" oil reserves. Almost 70 years later, in 2012, the US now has 21 billion barrels of "proven" oil reserves. In addition, between 1945 and 2010, the US has extracted over 165 billion barrels of oil.

According to President Obama, the United States contains only 2 percent of the planet’s proven oil reserves, Of course, he’s right — to a point. In classic fashion, he’s using a technicality to skirt the facts and keep the myth of energy scarcity alive. The reality is that the U.S. has enough recoverable oil for the next 200 years, despite only having 2 percent of the world’s current proven oil reserves.

Proven oil reserves are not all of our oil resources—not even close. In fact, proved reserves represent a tiny portion of our total oil resources. Proven (or proved) oil reserves are reserves that have already been discovered, typically through actual exploration or drilling, and which can be recovered economically. That estimate does not include oil that we know about, yet are unable to access because of regulatory barriers. For example, the billions of barrels of oil in ANWR are not included in our proved oil reserves. So let’s look at the facts.

Currently, the United States has 1,442 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, but only about 20 billion barrels are considered proven oil reserves.[ii] That is partly because the federal government is denying access to hundreds of millions of acres oil-rich federal lands: the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, the Naval Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, federal waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, at least 45 percent of the Gulf of Mexico, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, and oil shale on federal lands in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, to name a few. In the case of oil shale (an oil composed of kerogen), technology needs to be perfected to make its production viable, but this will not happen until the land is leased. Regrettably, the Department of Interior has stopped a leasing program Congress directed it to undertake."

[D1B]

Re: Source - another conk-financed org creating myths for the benefit of big oil.

Institute for Energy Research Just looked at their board of directors.

[Cap'n Cat]

Jesus, Baldy. Do you Conks actually think people don't check on your Conk-ass sources? This site is just porno for petroleos.

[andy7171]

Yeah Baldy! Algae and sunlight, that's the new poweer source! Get on board!

[Ibanez]

Yeah Baldy! Algae and sunlight, that's the new poweer source! Get on board!

Hey, Algae supplies the world with much of the oxygen. I've read in other reports that algae provides 50%-60% of the worlds O2. This site below claims 70%-80%.

http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/12/important-organism/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[andy7171]

Yeah Baldy! Algae and sunlight, that's the new poweer source! Get on board!

Hey, Algae supplies the world with much of the oxygen. I've read in other reports that algae provides 50%-60% of the worlds O2. This site below claims 70%-80%.

http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/12/important-organism/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

WTF, I said get on board.

[Baldy]

Jesus, Baldy. Do you Conks actually think people don't check on your Conk-ass sources? This site is just porno for petroleos.

Cappy and Dbag1 trying to deflect...again. I could understand your extremely weak 'argument' if the article contained projections or opinions or computer models (like all the Global Warming hysterics), but the numbers they use are easily proven and stone cold hard FACTS. Instead of wasting your energy to deflect the facts, use it to try and debunk the article, It's a short article. Knock yourself out, Chicken Little.

[AZGrizFan]

Jesus, Baldy. Do you Conks actually think people don't check on your Conk-ass sources? This site is just porno for petroleos.

Cappy and Dbag1 trying to deflect...again. I could understand your extremely weak 'argument' if the article contained projections or opinions or computer models (like all the Global Warming hysterics), but the numbers they use are easily proven and stone cold hard FACTS. Instead of wasting your energy to deflect the facts, use it to try and debunk the article, It's a short article. Knock yourself out, Chicken Little.

Well Baldy, you know the donk playbook when they can't refute facts.

[Baldy]

Cappy and Dbag1 trying to deflect...again. I could understand your extremely weak 'argument' if the article contained projections or opinions or computer models (like all the Global Warming hysterics), but the numbers they use are easily proven and stone cold hard FACTS. Instead of wasting your energy to deflect the facts, use it to try and debunk the article, It's a short article. Knock yourself out, Chicken Little.

Well Baldy, you know the donk playbook when they can't refute facts.

Lots of bloviating and LOTS of these:

[Vidav]

Well Baldy, you know the donk playbook when they can't refute facts.

Lots of bloviating and LOTS of these:

[kalm]

ABOUT IER
The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER believes that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today’s global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.

IER is the first linked stat (1400 billion barrels) from the article. Whether the bolded statement is right or wrong is a matter of opinion, but how common is it for scientific research institutes to have a political statement in their "about"? Or maybe I missed something and these guys are economists instead.

[Cap'n Cat]

Baldy and Z:

Flag-wrapped, biased haters. But, Limbaugh loves you!!!

[Bronco]

-
We have a president that doesn't have a clue

Video from MSNBC at link

Video: White House Czar Steve Rattner Admits Obama Has “No Energy Policy”…

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Steve Rattner, what’s the president doing on energy here?

STEVE RATTNER: Well, first of all, what you just referred to really doesn’t have a lot to do honestly with what this president did or previous presidents. We effectively have no energy policy. This is really the market at work. This is higher prices bringing out more supply, higher prices causing people to drive less–the resession having a huge impact on energy demand in this country. The president is saying like every president, we need to do something. And he is saying that what we need to do should be a mix of everything, that we need to drill, that we need to have solar, we need alternatives, we need conservation. He is trying to go down the middle and say we should have every piece of the energy puzzle. But the fact is, we haven’t done anything at a government level to develop any of those things.

Via Washington Free Beacon:

[Bronco]

Scarce Oil? U.S. Has 60 Times More Than Obama Claims
Investor's Business Daily ^ | 03/14/2012 | John Merline

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....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.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...

[AZGrizFan]

-
We have a president that doesn't have a clue

Video from MSNBC at link

Video: White House Czar Steve Rattner Admits Obama Has “No Energy Policy”…

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Steve Rattner, what’s the president doing on energy here?

STEVE RATTNER: Well, first of all, what you just referred to really doesn’t have a lot to do honestly with what this president did or previous presidents. We effectively have no energy policy. This is really the market at work. This is higher prices bringing out more supply, higher prices causing people to drive less–the resession having a huge impact on energy demand in this country. The president is saying like every president, we need to do something. And he is saying that what we need to do should be a mix of everything, that we need to drill, that we need to have solar, we need alternatives, we need conservation. He is trying to go down the middle and say we should have every piece of the energy puzzle. But the fact is, we haven’t done anything at a government level to develop any of those things.Via Washington Free Beacon:

JFC, that's embarrassing.

[kalm]

I remember Liebermann during the 2000 election stating that if we increased mileage standards by 2 mpg in matter of a few years would save more oil than is contained in all of ANWAR.

[Cap'n Cat]

-
We have a president that doesn't have a clue

Video from MSNBC at link

JFC, that's embarrassing.

It IS embarrassing, Conks. Haven't had one EVER. Obama is at least trying something different. Different, as in attempting to rein in a lecherous, abusive oil sheikdom in our own country!



(Cough!)ExxonProfits(cough!)




Four more years!!!!

[kalm]

-
We have a president that doesn't have a clue

Video from MSNBC at link

JFC, that's embarrassing.

We also haven't really had much of a trade policy for quite some time. You wanna sell your cheap made slave labor and environmentally destructive products here? Go ahead.

But for ffs, you conks gotta make up your minds. Keep government out of the market but wait...it's embarassing when we don't have an energy policy.

[Baldy]

JFC, that's embarrassing.

We also haven't really had much of a trade policy for quite some time. You wanna sell your cheap made slave labor and environmentally destructive products here? Go ahead.

But for ffs, you conks gotta make up your minds. Keep government out of the market but wait...it's embarassing when we don't have an energy policy.

When the government owns most of the land that contains almost all of the recoverable reserves, yeah, the government kinda needs to have an energy policy.

[AZGrizFan]

JFC, that's embarrassing.

We also haven't really had much of a trade policy for quite some time. You wanna sell your cheap made slave labor and environmentally destructive products here? Go ahead.

But for ffs, you conks gotta make up your minds. Keep government out of the market but wait...it's embarassing when we don't have an energy policy.

My GOD, Kalm...you're smarter than THAT, aren't you?

[kalm]

We also haven't really had much of a trade policy for quite some time. You wanna sell your cheap made slave labor and environmentally destructive products here? Go ahead.

But for ffs, you conks gotta make up your minds. Keep government out of the market but wait...it's embarassing when we don't have an energy policy.

My GOD, Kalm...you're smarter than THAT, aren't you?

I neither said we shouldn't have an energy policy nor that government should stay out of markets now did I?

[AZGrizFan]

My GOD, Kalm...you're smarter than THAT, aren't you?

I neither said we shouldn't have an energy policy nor that government should stay out of markets now did I?

Staying out of the market and having a policy are unrelated, for the most part.

[kalm]

I neither said we shouldn't have an energy policy nor that government should stay out of markets now did I?

Staying out of the market and having a policy are unrelated, for the most part.

How so...in conk parlance please?

(I wasn't targeting you and my guess is this is one of those moments where you apply some reason and separate from the true believers)

[JohnStOnge]

Beyond the true extent of our oil reserves question (and I understand that if we exploit our shale oil we've got more reserves than Saudi Arabia), the "2 percent of reserves and 20 percent of consumption" thing was always something that created a certain impression but was virtually meaningless in terms of useful information.

Saying we have 2 percent of reserves and 20 percent of consumption is not necessarily saying we don't have enough reserves to support our consumption for the foreseeable future.

Illustration: Let's say I'm going to be on an Island with 9 other people for a year. Our sole source of entertainment is battery powered video games. I use my video game a lot more than anyone else. In fact, I use 20 batteries per month and all the other people combined use 80.

Meanwhile, I've only got 2 percent of the batteries on the Island. Does that mean I'm going to run out of batteries before the year is up?

Not if I've got 240 of them and everybody else combined has 11760. In that case I have two percent of the batteries, I use 20 percent of the batteries, and I have enough batteries to make it though.

It is a vacant, virtually meaningless slogan and it amazes me that people get away with repeating it over and over again.

[JohnStOnge]

In addition, between 1945 and 2010, the US has extracted over 165 billion barrels of oil.

And according to the article at http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, a "moderate" estimate of what the United States has in terms of recoverable oil from oil shale is 800 billion barrels.

We have a lot of oil when shale is considered. And shale becomes a viable source as other sources become more expensive.

The idea that we dno't have the resources to make a significant impact is nonsense. We just need to get the friggin' environmentalists out of the way. No other country in the world would be doing what the United States is doing in terms of failing to exploit what it has.