Misconceptions and Lies About U.S. “Oil Reserves”

Misconceptions and Lies About U.S. “Oil Reserves”:

One of the biggest misapprehensions out there regarding U.S. energy policy has to do with what the term “oil reserves” really means. The President has been playing into the fears of those who erroneously believe this country doesn’t have abundant petroleum that can be developed. John Merline at Investor’s Business Daily explains Obama’s core deception on the energy front:

“With only 2% of the world’s oil reserves, we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices,” he said. “Not when we consume 20% of the world’s oil.”
The claim makes it appear as though the U.S. is an oil-barren nation, perpetually dependent on foreign oil and high prices unless we can cut our own use and develop alternative energy sources like algae.
But the figure Obama uses — proved oil reserves — vastly undercounts how much oil the U.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, the country is awash in vast quantities — enough to meet all the country’s 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 world’s proved reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration. But as the EIA explains, proved reserves “are a small subset of recoverable resources,” because they only count oil that companies are currently drilling for in existing fields.

My emphasis.

The IBD article lists all the undeveloped oil we know about, but are mostly not allowed to produce, such as the 86 billion barrels on the Outer Continental Shelf, 26 billion barrels available from U.S. shale, 12 billion in ANWR, 19 billion in the Utah tar sands . . . and that’s just for starters, since some of the unconventional forms of extraction are just hitting their stride.
And this is only oil; natural gas can be used as a liquid fuel for some vehicles, too (as well as a source of electricity, and a means of heating our homes and cooking)—and hydraulic fracturing [fracking] is revolutionizing the way we get that; it would be doing better if the environmental extremists weren’t so afraid of it.
We also haven’t lifted a finger to build any up-to-date nuclear plants—you know, the safe type that can withstand earthquakes and tsumanis—and we aren’t doing as much as we should to get access to rare earth materials for batteries. (Those last two points are a bit odd, coming from an administration that tells us it wants us to drive more electric cars, but apparently without batteries and without clean electricity.)
And then, there’s all that Canadian oil that we can’t buy because the President is blocking a privately funded pipeline that would deliver “ethical oil” to refineries on our own Gulf Coast—and increase employment in a region that has absorbed several major economic blows over the past decade. The same area, of course, is already being cruelly punished by his “permitorium” in the Gulf.
Meanwhile, gas prices go up, and we are told that these massive amounts of oil under our land and water wouldn’t affect the world market, if they were unleashed. Does anyone really believe that?
A line from Aliens comes to mind: “Whatever you’re going to do, do it quick.”
November cannot come too soon.