US domestic oil reserves would be completely depleted in less than 20 years?

[4dsc]

Interesting..

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2007/0724.html

Having evaluated current data on reserves, consumption and production of oil in the United States, I have compiled four charts which illustrate various scenarios of what might occur over the next ten to twenty years. The data sources for this brief study are the United States Department of Energy and the CIA World Factbook. *All chart numbers reflect billions of barrels.

Scenario One. It is 2007 and current United States oil reserves are 23.45 billion barrels. Annual consumption in the US is 7.56 billion barrels, while annual production is 2.77 billion barrels. This results in an oil deficit of 4.79 billion barrels per year, or 63% of consumption. Scenario one assumes that nothing changes. No discoveries are made that add to reserves, and annual consumption and production levels neither increase nor decrease. Annual production is simply subtracted from reserves. Under this scenario, domestic reserves would be depleted in the year 2016.

[lvx35]

1. Scenario one, defeat in 2016. Scenario two, defeat in 2018, scenario three...

...an interesting game doctor, the only winning move is not to play. :(


Seriously, this post, ergo everything. This is the central thing driving policy behind the scenes for the last decade, I am sure of it.

[lostnotforgotten]

2. Please Cross Post At The Peak Oil Group

eom

[toska]

3. Mexico too?

Wasn't there a report recently that showed that Mexico would go dry in about the same timeframe? And that's a sizable chunk of our foreign oil.

[whistle]

4. What about all of the shale oil and tar sands deposits which

...represent more oil reserves in the U.S. and Canada then what is available in all of the middle east/Southwest Asia?

The U.S. Department of Energy publish their report in March 2004 which shows in Figure 3 on page 11 that U.S. Oil Shale and Canadian Tar Sands constitute some 3.8 trillion barrels of untapped oil production while the rest of the known and still untapped reserves around the world are less than 2.7 trillion barrels.

<link> http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/npr/publications/npr_strategic_significancev1.pdf

Okay, so Tar Sands exploitation has been ecologically disasterous to theose areas in northeast Alberta Canada where this has been allowed to take place with little or no regulation and control over the major companies including ESSO-Exxon. However, the Oil Shale extraction process does provide cleaner and cost effective means through economical and simple methods of subterrainian heating and pumping. (see link below)

For example 4th generational thorium gas cooled reactors could produce enough surplus heat to extract oil shale petroleum as well as produce fresh water by desalinization and electrical power. Construction of these could begin immediately and be in place operating and productive within four to five years with all the technicians and engineers fully trained to operate these. Beyond that, breakthroughs are happening to make it feasible for commercial fusion reactors which would be safe and produce unlimited power by 2020 and commercially available on a large scale within five years following that.

Like the Man on the Moon Program begun by JFK, this is possible and highly probable. If there is the political will, technology can make it possible to expoit our own oil sources in North America giving the U.S. energy independence and still satisfy our needs for a clean environment. It sure beats fighting a trillion and a half billion dollar war and loosing 3,700 American lives for oil IMHO.

<snip>
April 26, 2007
Oil Shale: Toward a Strategic Unconventional Fuels Supply Policy
by Daniel Fine, Ph.D.
Heritage Lecture #1015
Delivered on March 8, 2007

I'm pleased to be invited to The Heritage Foundation and to develop with Heritage and in Washington what might be called the "shale story," which currently is almost silent with regard to national policy and world petroleum. Earlier on, I edited a book on the resource war in the Reagan Administration. It was based upon how to understand, how to conceptualize strategic resources: oil, gas, and hard-rock minerals. I'm currently based both on the East Coast and in New Mexico, participating in the New Mexico energy model for the country and maybe the world.

The New Mexico model is based on a diversity of fuels. It is not exclusive; in fact, the language of "alternative," "conventional," "bio," "geo" is almost disappearing. The concern statewide is: What is fuel? Where is the supply of energy going to come from? And the model is diversification, which in New Mexico means solar; the energy technology of national laboratories; the fourth largest producer of natural gas (California depends on New Mexico for 30 percent of its gas and electricity); the potential for hydrogen; the utilization export of CO2; and, finally, oil.

That's an effective energy production model for the country to follow. In one portfolio, all the energy assets are recognized systemically rather than competitively in terms of production of energy and fuels. Robert Gallagher, who served in Washington in the Clinton Administration Department of Energy (DOE) and is now president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, has made the New Mexico model an operational success.

<MORE>

http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/hl1015.cfm

[NickB79]

5. Good luck finding enough water to make that commercially viable

The Alberta oil sand operations are draining the river basin that runs through the region, restricting future expansion of the mining operations. And the US oil shale reserves are in the Southwest, an area that has been seeing increasing droughts due to global warming. Without plentiful water supplies, oil from sand or shale operations grind to a halt.