Ya know probably most people know this already but I just want to make sure it is stated on this forum. McCain and the republicans have been stating we can help America by doing more drilling here to help break our dependence on foreign oil and drop gas prices. THIS ARGUMENT IS COMPLETE BULLSHIT. Why?

Two things. American uses 25% of the world’s oil. Only 2% of the world’s oil reserves are in America.

So that whole argument about we can break foreign dependence on oil or drop gas prices is completely impossible. WE don’t have enough to support ourselves. WE have to have oil from countries like Saudi Arabi to supply our need for it.

Alternative energies is the only way to break our dependence on foreign oil. Anything else is a bold faced lie. Don’t buy into that bullshit.

Why cant these people see the ET (electic technologies) are the future boom industys. The thing that they are all shying away from is the industry that can drive the worlds economies for the next 20 years.

I hate that statistic. No one tells us how much 25% is, and how much 2% is. if 25% of the worlds consumption is only half a percent of the oil reserves, then we have 4 times as much oil then we need.

Those two statistics alone mean nothing.

I've been reading a lot about oil lately, so I think I can give some useful information.

The world consumes approximately 80-85 million barrels per day, the US consumes about 20 million barrels per day.

US proven reserves are 21 billion barrels, enough for about 3 years of consumption. The estimate of undiscovered resources is 134 billion barrels, enouh for 18 years of consumption (but this is an estimate).

However, there's a big problem those naive calculations don't show. USA's production rates can't keep up with daily consumption. The USA produces around 5 million barrels per day right now, and it's not due to output throttling. Production falls every day because oil extraction slows down as the oil fields deplete. This means more and more imports are necessary to satisfy consumption.

Now for the interesting stuff:

Obviously, more drilling can theoretically help to contain or reverse this decline in production. The problem is that it takes a long time (many years) to start up production in non-explored areas. For example:

Quick math: 4.3 billion barrels in 12 years means less than 1 million barrels per day. This is a best case scenario.

Conclusion: The USA isn't going to be independent from oil imports for the foreseeable future. If someone tells you otherwise, ask them how they're going to eliminate or replace 15 million barrels of daily oil imports.

Here are some good articles which provide references to more authorative sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_depletion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Oil
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4621
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_Reserves_in_the_United_States

Thanks NJ5. That is useful information. What it means is we have an estimated 20 years of oil under us. For other reasons we can't get it fast enough, and that should be what politicians say.

I am very much for alternative fuels (I like biodiesel for cars), but not extracting as much oil as we can seems strange. What's the downside to going after those 155 billion barrels?

That's a fair way to put it, the key thing is that this oil can't be extracted in 20 years (not even close).

Potential downsides of going after these reserves:

- Lack of resources (for example, shortage of drilling rigs).
- A big investment would be needed (perhaps not easy to come by during this economic crisis)
- Environmental issues

I didn't read these articles but they probably have some useful information about that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_offshore_drilling_debate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy

TheRealMafoo- shouldn't have needed that anyways. Anyone should be able to tell from statistics that there is a serious issue with 25% of consumption and only 2% of the world's oil reserves. But I guess concrete data helps those that need it.  Point being Oil is not America's future.  It just can't be given this.

I am going to make these numbers up (and grossly exaggerate them), to illustrate how these numbers don't mean anything on there own.

if 2% of the worlds oil reserves are 500,000,000,000 barrels, and 25% of the worlds oil use was 50 barrels, would we have a problem?

We need to know the absolute values of each of those percentages for the statistic to matter.

Oil sands ppl... Oil sands -- Plus deep mid-Atlantic baseline Gulf oil that is hard to reach but pumps out a crapload when tapped.

We already discussed oil sands the other day, remember? There are not many in USA and production is already ongoing there.