Robert Samuelson wonders why we have high gas prices when there's all this untapped oil just waiting to be exploited on our coastlines:
It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25 billion to 30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion barrels of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves). (emphasis mine).
Samuelson "argues" that these reserves remain untapped due to "exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity." Uh-huh. But rather than argue over this point, let's do a little arithmetic instead. Samuelson notes that the world consumes 86 million barrels of oil a day, and that demand has gone up. According to the EIA, the United States consumed 20,687,000 barrels/day in 2006. Now let's pretend that rate of consumption holds steady into the future and that there are indeed 30 billions barrels of oil to be tapped. The result?
30,000,000,000 / 20,687,000 = 1,450.19 days
Divided by 365 days, this magical oil supply would last just about four years. Talk about a long term strategy for energy independence! And keep in mind that's with no change in growth. Even if we factor in foreign imports (Samuelson cites a figure of 60 percent), at best we're looking at a decade. I don't know if Samuelson just dislikes doing basic arithmetic, hates environmentalists or likes intentionally misleading his readers or some combination thereof, but is it too much to ask that public discussions about oil consumption actually, you know, talk about the consumption rate itself?
--Mori Dinauer
