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Family Security Matters does not stand behind or endorse any candidate for president (or any other public office). However, as the President is also Commander-in-Chief and is responsible for setting national security policy, we will be publishing a variety of articles on both the Republican and Democrat candidates for President during this election year. As always, the opinions of our Contributing Editors are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of Family Security Matters.

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August 29, 2008

Exclusive: Oil, Oil Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink

Jan Mel Poller

Do politicians ever check numbers before they make statements? Do their followers check what the politicians say? They don’t seem to. Is it because their philosophy won’t stand up to scrutiny?

Whenever I go to liberal websites or forums, I keep seeing “The U.S. has 3% of the world’s oil reserves and uses 25% of the world’s oil.” Many politicians say the same thing. This is beyond being a playbook, this has become a bible.

The world produces about 84 million barrels of oil per day and the U.S. uses about 20 million. That is 23% - close enough to 25% in a political discussion. But do we only have 3% of the world’s oil reserves?

The 3% is from Congressional testimony about 10 years ago. It is meaningless. When you research oil reserves, you find:

1. Most of the earth hasn’t been checked for oil, particularly Africa

2. We don’t know how much oil there is in the U.S. and its coastal waters because laws were passed to prevent us from exploring and knowing.

3. The United States geological Survey (USGS) reports undiscovered oil deposits as though they are discovered, such as 90 BBL (Billion of Barrels) of undiscovered oil in the whole Arctic basin.

4. Technically recoverable oil reserves vary with the price of oil. The correct term is economically and technically recoverable.

It is not possible to know how much oil exists on earth or what percentage the U.S. has.

Do we have enough known, economically recoverable oil reserve to establish oil independence? The answer to that is yes. The chart below shows just some of the United States oil reserves. It doesn’t take into account oil fields in Texas, Oklahoma, California, and Kentucky, Florida or other fields still in production. The chart shows the minimum of what we have, not the maximum.

Some Major Oil Reserves
	Recoverable
Location	Low BBL	High BBL
Bakken Shale Oil	2.760	150.000
Green River Shale Oil	500.000	1,100.000
Bakken Oil	3.000	4.200
Anwar	7.700	10.400
Gulf of Mexico available for drilling	40.320	40.320
Gulf of Mexico offshore not available	89.170	89.170
Alaska OCS	8.660	26.610
Atlantic OCS	1.120	3.820
Gulf OF Mexico	41.210	44.920
Pacific OCS	7.530	10.530
Total	701.470	1,479.970
Non-Shale Total	198.710	229.970
Present Usage - Barrels a day	20,000,000	20,000,000
Number of years	96	203
Non-Shale Years	27	32

Just the few fields on the chart show that we have between 700 billion and 1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable oil in just those few fields. Processes for developing viable extraction of oil from shale oil is under development. If we just look at non-shale oil, the U.S. has at least 198 to 227 BBL of economically recoverable oil.

The Department of Energy reports the history of oil imports in thousands of barrels, not dollars.

U.S. Crude Oil Imports from All Countries (Thousand Barrels)

Decade	Year-0	Year-1	Year-2	Year-3	Year-4	Year-5	Year-6	Year-7	Year-8	Year-9
1910's	557	1,710	7,383	17,809	16,913	18,139	30,570	30,127	37,736	52,822
1920's	106,175	125,364	127,308	82,015	77,775	61,824	60,382	58,449	79,767	78,933
1930's	62,129	47,250	44,682	31,893	35,458	32,239	32,327	27,484	26,412	33,095
1940's	42,662	50,606	12,297	13,833	44,815	74,337	86,066	97,532	129,093	153,686
1950's	177,714	179,073	209,591	236,455	239,479	285,421	341,833	373,255	348,007	352,344
1960's	371,575	381,548	411,039	412,660	438,643	452,040	447,120	411,649	472,323	514,114
1970's	483,293	613,417	811,135	1,183,996	1,269,155	1,498,181	1,935,012	2,414,327	2,319,826	2,379,541
1980's	1,926,162	1,604,703	1,273,214	1,215,225	1,253,949	1,168,297	1,524,978	1,705,922	1,869,005	2,132,761
1990's	2,151,387	2,110,532	2,226,341	2,477,230	2,578,072	2,638,810	2,747,839	3,002,299	3,177,584	3,186,663
2000's	3,319,816	3,404,894	3,336,175	3,527,696	3,692,063	3,695,971	3,693,081	3,661,404

Notice the big jumps in 1972 followed by a bigger jump in 1973 – the year of the Arab oil embargo.

With the vast oil reserves we have, it is unconscionable for Congress to prevent us from exploiting our own reserves. It may take 10 years to end our dependence on imported oil and the start should not be delayed. The benefits of ending our import of oil are:

1. Our trade deficit drastically declines.

2. The oil industry employees people in the United States rather than exporting the jobs to other countries.

3. We could become an exporter of oil and use the income to reduce our trade deficit even further, perhaps make it into a trade surplus.

4. We can protect Europe from Russian blackmail.

5. We can use the savings to develop additional sources of energy.

6. We can develop economical shale oil recovery during this period and then we have a few hundred years of recoverable reserves.

The political implications are staggering. A major campaign should be announced that does more than say “Drill here, Drill Now.” Every time people fill up their cars, they get a jolt of reality, even at the $3.50 a gallon that is appearing. Americans are smart enough to know that we should be keeping the jobs and money at home, not sending it to people who hate us.

The point of this is that we have immense oil reserves and that we can have energy independence in less than 10 years with the oil sources we already know about. Used wisely, they can give us the time to build nuclear power plants, develop solar power and wind power. Then we can have electric cars. If our fleet magically changed to electric power tomorrow, the economy would die because we don’t have the electric power to run them.

The Republican Convention is coming up next week. Will there be a a major speech on energy policy? They’d be foolish to ignore this vital issue.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Jan Mel Poller holds degrees in math and physics, and has had a 40-plus year career in computer software. He believes that technology, science and politics all come together when we face the challenges of the world.

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