Quote from Free Thinker:
But above and beyond that, history indicates Romneyâs setting himself up for failure.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/
âWith only 2% of the worldâs oil reserves, we canât just drill our way to lower gas prices,â President Barack Obama has stated over and over. âNot when we consume 20% of the worldâs oil." The claim is blatantly false. The figure Obama usesâproved oil reservesâvastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, the country is awash in vast quantitiesâenough to meet all the countryâs oil needs for hundreds of years.
The U.S. has 22.3 billion barrels of proved reserves, a little less than 2% of the entire worldâs proved reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration. But as the EIA explains, proved reserves âare a small subset of recoverable resources,â because they only count oil that companies are currently drilling for in existing fields. How much recoverable oil does the U.S. have in addition to the 22.3 billion Obama had in mind? Start with the Green River Formation in Wyoming: 1.4 trillion barrelsâsixty-two times as much as Obama counts.
After Green River, itâs almost embarrassing to count other sources: 86 billion on the outer continental shelf; 24 billion in the lower 48; 2 billion on Alaskaâs north slope; 19 billion in Utah tar sands; 12 billion in ANWR. Then add in oil shale: 800 billion just in Wyoming and neighboring states. When you include oil shale, the U.S. has 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to the Institute for Energy Research, enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for about the next 200 years, without any imports.â
These estimates are almost sure to rise over timeâto anywhere from three or four to twenty or twenty-five times as much. Those are the ranges of error on past official estimates of recoverable oil. Here is what Robert Bradley Jr. calculated back in 2000 for the carbon-based energies:
Proved oil reserves today are estimated to be fifteen times greater than the original 1948 estimate despite interim production of eleven times this amount. World natural gas reserves in the last thirty years have increased almost five-fold despite interim production that has been 80 percent above the 1967 estimate. World coal reserves today are estimated to be over four times the amount calculated nearly a half-century ago.
So, which is it, Mr. President? Did you know these facts? One way or the other, the outcome was that you misled the American peopleânot slightly, but grossly.