Looking Out From the Garage: More Earth Day fun... ;^D

More Earth Day fun... ;^D

Since it is Earth Day, I needed to toss on an orange shirt and be as "not Green" as I could.. just for fun... 

Let's move on to oil, oil reserves and drilling.  I already did one on Anthropomorphic Global Warming...

Here are a few fun facts that we can watch get spun today.   

  • The largest importer of oil to the US is Canada.  The are reputed to have 179.2B barrels of provable reserves.
  • At their current rate, those reserves will hold out 182 years.  
    • Oddly, the same source says that 95% are in oil sand... but they don't include the oil shale in the US
  • The US has 21B barrels and can pump 12 more years at current rates.
  • The US uses 21M barrels a day...
    • We could last about 1000 DAYS if we didn't get oil from anywhere else... if we could pump the oil out fast enough.
  • The US found another 3-4.5B barrels in ND/MT just this month.  That isn't included in the above number.
  • Also not included in the above number is oil shale... and we have A LOT of it.  We have 2,500B barrels.  We could run the US oil supply for 110 years with no oil imports. 
    • Just to give you an idea, this is more oil that has been used since the discovery of oil...
    • Estimates say that oil needs to be at $75/barrel for it to be economically recoverable. 
  • ANWR (also not included in the above number) contains between 5.7 and 16B barrels of oil.  The mean (10.4B barrels) would let us cut off "unfriendly" oil for a decade or two...
  • China and Cuba have announced plans to drill off the south coast of FL (in the straights) for the 4.6-9.3B barrels of oil there.  Much of it actually lies in US waters, but they can use "slant drilling" to recover the oil.  Florida won't let us drill for the same oil.
  • There are also a few billion barrels off the west coast of FL... that they won't let us go after. 
Using these data (estimated reserves: 800 billions of barrels, world consumption: 76 millions per day), it looks like planet Earth has have oil for about 10,000 days, i.e. about 27 years. Assuming that consumption does not increase... If consumption increases an average 5% a year, then we have oil for about 15 years. But the US Geological Survey estimates the amount of oil that is still to be found at about 3 trillions, three times the oil reserves known today (it is not clear if "all" that oil can actually be pumped to the surface and therefore used). The real issue is when will production be insufficient to cover demand? That largely depends on demand, not on reserves.Source

Wikipedia Oil Reserves

China Drilling 

Gulf of Mexico Reserves get a bump

ANWR Drilling Wiki

I guess that is enough picking on Earth Day... 

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14 comments • Lane Bailey - REALTOR & Car Guy • April 22 2008 02:21PM

Comments

Lane, There will be no Nobel Peace prizes for you, how can you blaspheme such a Liberal pagan ritual as earth day.
Posted by Hugh Krone Sussex County NJ Realtor (Weichert Referral Associates) about 4 years ago
Errrrrr - don't forget JC Bell. UNLIMITED oil without drilling as long as we have the ability to grow anything. Add to that the side issue of bankrupting OPEC and there is really no downside!
Posted by Simon Conway (Orlando Area Real Estate Services) about 4 years ago

Lane:

The liberal whackos are ruining everything.

Posted by » Bill Burress Nationwide Mortgage Originator about 4 years ago

Lane:

Congratulations!

This post has earned featured post status on the Silent Majority group in ActiveRain.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by » Bill Burress Nationwide Mortgage Originator about 4 years ago

Hugh - I know that I am blaspheming the AlGore...  I'm ok with that. 

Simon - I'm not on the bio-fuels bandwagon... except bio-diesel from used cooking oil.  

Bill - Thanks for the feature.  I think that for the most part, people just hear one side of the story and assume it must be true... the Sierra Club wouldn't lie, right?

Posted by Lane Bailey - REALTOR & Car Guy (Century 21 Results Realty) about 4 years ago
Lane - great post. If we could just utilize what we currently have while exploring alternative fuels sources we would be in good shape. Unfortunately we are prevented from utilizing our own resources by the very people who would sell us out to our enemies in a heartbeat. If only more people could see and understand this data.
Posted by Gene Wunderlich - Realtor® & Legislative Liaison (1st Action Real Estate) about 4 years ago

Earth Day. A religious holiday for liberals.

Those are nice stats. i have seen them before. We must get some elected leaders who will work for us on this one.

Posted by Kevin Robinson House Buying Guy about 4 years ago

Gene - Until more people make noise, those that do make the noise will control the argument.

Kevin - While I appreciate the idea behind Earth Day, I think that many are a bit misguided.  

Posted by Lane Bailey - REALTOR & Car Guy (Century 21 Results Realty) about 4 years ago
Lane- I read the other day that prior to WWII Japan got 90% of its oil from..................... The United States!  Great post makes me think the congress will stand in the way of JC Bell when he gets things going.
Posted by Delaware Junk Removal Residential Commercial Hauling Recycling (DelawareJunkRemoval.com) about 4 years ago

Hi Lane, I was born and raised in South Louisiana. I know for a fact that from the early 80's on all the big oil companies where doing to save their offshore leases was drill{ which was required} then cap. Still is happening today. Shale oil is another big mystery. When I was into heavy construction diesel was much cheaper than gasoline for the simple fact that it takes less money to refine. { only 1 step away from kerosene } Now it is more expensive than priemium gas. And Diesel is what brings the goodies to market,go figure.

Posted by Keith Perry - REALTOR® -West Metro Atlanta (Coldwell Banker) about 4 years ago

Larry - I wouldn't be shocked.  In fact, I think that one of the reasons we were attacked was because we started shutting off their supply... we needed it. 

K&R - Here is perhaps the best article I've seen to explain the issues facing diesel.  Csaba Csere in Car & Driver.  Here is a quote from the very end which sums up the problem quite nicely:

Al Mannato, a fuel-issues manager at API, explains that oil refineries tend to fall into two categories: catalytic cracking and hydrocracking. Most U.S. refineries are set up for catalytic cracking, which turns each barrel of crude oil into about 50-percent gasoline, 15-percent diesel, and the remainder into jet fuel, home heating oil, heavy fuel oil, liquefied petroleum gas, asphalt, and various other products. In Europe and most of the rest of the world, refineries use a hydrocracking process, which produces more like 25-percent gasoline and 25-percent diesel from that barrel of oil. So the rest of the world is already maximizing diesel production. In fact, despite using a refining strategy that minimizes the production of gasoline, Europe still ends up with too much of the stuff, so it exports it to America—about one of every eight gallons of gasoline that we consume.

Meanwhile, Americans are already using most of the diesel fuel that our refineries produce, so if sales of diesel cars take off, keeping the diesel flowing here will put further demands on tight worldwide diesel supplies and probably cause the price to rise even more. Our oil industry could, of course, start converting its refineries from catalytic to hydrocracking and start producing more diesel and less gasoline.

Doing so—and here’s the Catch-22—would reduce the output of gasoline and likely increase its price. Moreover, such a switch, Mannato explains, amounts to a major refinery change that would take 5 to 10 years to accomplish. Building some new hydrocracking refineries would add diesel capacity without squeezing gasoline supplies, but due to their nearly universal unpopularity, there hasn’t been a new refinery built in America since 1979.

There are a lot of reasons, but this is the most systemic.

Posted by Lane Bailey - REALTOR & Car Guy (Century 21 Results Realty) about 4 years ago
Earth Day - I remember celebrating that way back in elementary school. Then when you speak of the oil industry - there is so much to comprehend to make sense of it all. I liked the stats you posted, very informational post! - Carla
Posted by Carla Harbert - RE/MAX Pros (Full Time REALTOR in Ohio) about 4 years ago
Lane, did you know Dem's and Republicans are trying to pass a 1 Trillion tax for global warming? 
Posted by Missy Caulk-Ann Arbor-Realtor® Ann Arbor Real Estate (Keller Williams-Ann Arbor) about 4 years ago

Carla - Too many people try to simplify their oil arguments... and they are usually the same people that have issues with Bush because he isn't "nuanced" enough for them.  This is a complicated issue, and can't be boiled down to a slogan. 

Missy - And it wouldn't affect the countries that are creating more pollution (China, India, etc.)

Posted by Lane Bailey - REALTOR & Car Guy (Century 21 Results Realty) about 4 years ago

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