The 2% Oil Dishonesty

Hotair.com exposes the fallacious claim that the U.S. consumes 20% of the world's oil, but has "only 2%" of the world's oil reserves. According to the U.S. Dept of Energy, the 2% figure is "proved oil reserves" only, and "proved oil reserves" are a tiny fraction of the U.S.'s total domestic oil supply. In fact, the U.S. is oil rich.

Proved reserves is a valuable number to keep track of, no doubt. It gives you a good snapshot of the amount of oil you’re currently tapping into, and that allows you to develop solid estimates of what’s going to be entering the pipeline each season.

But by the same token, it’s not any sort of reflection of what your total assets are. That’s like saying that Bill Gates only has $20K of liquid cash in his primary checking account this month so he must be close to filing for bankruptcy. Here’s a more complete picture for you:

• At least 86 billion barrels of oil in the Outer Continental Shelf yet to be discovered
• About 24 billion barrels in shale deposits in the lower 48 states, according to EIA.
• Up to 2 billion barrels of oil in shale deposits in Alaska’s North Slope
• Up to 12 billion barrels in ANWR, according to the USGS.
• As much as 19 billion barrels in the Utah tar sands
• A stunning 1.4 trillion barrels of oil shale the massive Green River Formation in Wyoming

The main problem is that most of these resources are roped off. Just knowing the oil is there comes as little comfort if there are never going to be any leases issued by the government for energy companies to explore. And our ability to access the shale oil – while technically well within our capability today – will be significantly hamstrung as long as activists continue to fight fracking and horizontal drilling.