Gas Prices and Oil availability

[coolchange]

the three paragraphs below are from the newsletter cited at the end. I am posting because I wonder what you all think of this.


This huge annual car event (New York Auto Show) happened to be going on during a week in which the price of crude oil jumped above $55-a-barrel for the first time since the late summer of 2004.You'd think that this would be a signal to the American public that it was time to...uh...re-think our national obsession with easy motoring? Not so. At least not among the people I spoke with at random. Their delusions were strikingly florid, in fact, the most common and basic one being that America possesses a bountiful supply of oil -- if only the sundry enviro-freaks and corporate chiselers would let us at it.


The facts, sadly, belie that notion. United States oil reserves stand at about 28 billion barrels (if you include natural gas condensates). I am not speaking here of the government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which is a tiny fraction of this, but of the total amount of crude oil left underground anywhere in the fifty states: 28 billion barrels. Now, Americans use more than 20 million barrels of oil a day. That's 100 million every five days. That's a billion (1,000 million) every fifty days. That's -- give or take -- seven billion barrels of oil a year. If for some reason our oil imports were cut off and we had to depend solely on our own oil, our total reserves would last four measly years. Actually a bit less if you figure that a portion of that oil will never be pumped out for practical and economic reasons.


It so happens that we currently import more than two thirds of the 20 million barrels a day we use. Of that, about a quarter comes from our good friends in the Persian Gulf nations. More than ten percent comes from Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chavez, despises America because we have tried to overthrow and kill him more than once. Another hefty percentage comes from West African nations so sclerotic in governance that the work of the oil companies can barely get done amid the political and social chaos. It's not a pretty picture.




http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/curmudgeon/index_NY_auto_show.html :?:

[Go Aweigh2452]

We use 20 mil/day and import 11.1mil/day. We produce 8.84 mil/day and export 5.81 mil/day too. Currently our reserves are at 22,045 mil.


(Note: discoveries of 2003 and 2004 have vastly increased the oil reserves of both Canada and Australia. They both seem to harbor more oil than Iraq and both may be able to compete with Saudi Arabia)

Using these data: (estimated reserves: 800 billions of barrels, world consumption: 76 millions per day), it looks like planet Earth has have oil for about 10,000 days, i.e. about 27 years. Assuming that consumption does not increase... If consumption increases an average 5% a year, then we have oil for about 15 years.

But there is Good news.....

But the US Geological Survey estimates the amount of oil that is still to be found at about 3 trillions, three times the oil reserves known today (it is not clear if "all" that oil can actually be pumped to the surface and therefore used). The real issue is when will production be insufficient to cover demand? That largely depends on demand, not on reserves.

[Go Aweigh2452]

I-912

The Secretary of State has given the "No New Gas Tax" Initiative the number "912". It's now in the hands of the Attorney General to prepare the ballot title.

The text of the proposed initiative, as it came out of the code reviser's office is very simple, it basically strikes the gas tax increase from the legislation just enacted.

Where's Tim Eiman when you need him? :D