Bloomberg: Bush Lifts Ban on U.S. Offshore Oil, Gas Drilling
About 17.8 billion barrels and 76 trillion cubic feet of gas are off-limits to drilling as a result of congressional and presidential moratoria, according to the Minerals Management Service, an agency of the U.S. Interior Department.
The oil available would amount to just over two years of U.S. consumption. Bush today said the potential reserve from the restricted areas would last almost 10 years.
Making generously broad assumptions that all 17.8 billion barrels of oil are used in the production of motor gasoline, we extract all of it at once and all of it gets to the pump in less than half a decade, the estimates of two and ten years sound dubious to me. My calculation yields a number that lies somewhere in between. Given that current EIA data has US motor gasoline consumption at 9,253,000 barrels/day (388.6 million gallons/day), you do the math and report back with results. Note that the cubic feet of gas number is immaterial to this exercise since this country doesn’t use LPG/LNG to power its cars.
Two years, five years, ten years, whatever. And then what? Are we going back to godawful OPEC with our empty gas tanks out? When do we start to think ahead?
Update: One would think that the smart course of action is leaving the reserve for more dire situations than imagined in our current myopia and beginning to conserve now. Don’t expect conservation to be backed by any flavor of American government, however, because it would net more oil but the government wants tax revenue now.
We’re so addicted to oil that we can’t see it will eventually kill us all.
Peace,
Tim
Oil isn’t going to kill us as much as not preparing for when it runs out. Everyone needs to get involved stat, not just the American government and the oil companies, but also important players like auto manufacturers, foreign governments and the public.
Are we willing to pay more at the pump in existing vehicles or spend the money on purchasing hybrids, re-outfitting existing pumps with hydrogen and LNG, mass transit (including high-speed rail) and simply driving less?
Some argue that we should forget about alternatives, but like they themselves like to say about offshore drilling, “We have to start somewhere and some time.”