BREAKING NEWS: McCain SUSPENDS HIS CAMPAIGN (merged)

So drill, duh.

If we drilled in ANWR in 2000, that oil would be online now, eh?

 

We use 25% of the oil and produce 33% of the world's wealth. It's a pretty good deal for everyone if you think about it.

There's population explosion in some places, but not in others. Europe is getting older in a big way. So is the USA.

This chart is for only the top 12 oil producing countries or those with the largest oil reserves. There are many more. The figures do not include ANWR, offshore, oil shale, and other sources in the USA. The 65 year number contradicts your 20 year figure. It truly is 150+ years if you count all the rest.

<table class="wikitable"><caption>Summary of Reserve Data as of 2007</caption> <tbody><tr> <th rowspan="2">Country</th> <th colspan="2">Reserves ¹</th> <th colspan="2">Production ²</th> <th>Reserve life ³</th> </tr> <tr> <th>10⁹ bbl</th> <th>10⁹ m³</th> <th>10⁶ bbl/d</th> <th>10³ m³/d</th> <th>years</th> </tr> <tr> <td>Saudi Arabia</td> <td align="right">260</td> <td align="right">41</td> <td align="right">8.8</td> <td align="right">1,400</td> <td align="right">81</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Canada</td> <td align="right">179</td> <td align="right">28.5</td> <td align="right">2.7</td> <td align="right">430</td> <td align="right">182</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Iran</td> <td align="right">136</td> <td align="right">21.6</td> <td align="right">3.9</td> <td align="right">620</td> <td align="right">96</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Iraq</td> <td align="right">115</td> <td align="right">18.3</td> <td align="right">3.7</td> <td align="right">590</td> <td align="right">85</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Kuwait</td> <td align="right">99</td> <td align="right">15.7</td> <td align="right">2.5</td> <td align="right">400</td> <td align="right">108</td> </tr> <tr> <td>United Arab Emirates</td> <td align="right">97</td> <td align="right">15.4</td> <td align="right">2.5</td> <td align="right">400</td> <td align="right">106</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Venezuela</td> <td align="right">80</td> <td align="right">13</td> <td align="right">2.4</td> <td align="right">380</td> <td align="right">91</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Russia</td> <td align="right">60</td> <td align="right">9.5</td> <td align="right">9.5</td> <td align="right">1,510</td> <td align="right">17</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Libya</td> <td align="right">41.5</td> <td align="right">6.60</td> <td align="right">1.8</td> <td align="right">290</td> <td align="right">63</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Nigeria</td> <td align="right">36.2</td> <td align="right">5.76</td> <td align="right">2.3</td> <td align="right">370</td> <td align="right">43</td> </tr> <tr> <td>United States</td> <td align="right">21</td> <td align="right">3.3</td> <td align="right">4.9</td> <td align="right">780</td> <td align="right">11</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Mexico</td> <td align="right">12</td> <td align="right">1.9</td> <td align="right">3.2</td> <td align="right">510</td> <td align="right">10</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Total of top twelve reserves</td> <td align="right">1,137</td> <td align="right">180.8</td> <td align="right">48.2</td> <td align="right">7,660</td> <td align="right">65</td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan="6"><small>Notes:</small> <dl><dd><small>1 Claimed or estimated reserves in billions (10⁹) of barrels (converted to billions of cubic metres). (Source: Oil & Gas Journal, January, 2007)</small></dd><dd><small>2 Production rate in millions (10⁶) of barrels per day (converted to thousands of cubic metres per day) (Source: US Energy Information Authority, September, 2007)<sup id="cite_ref-14" class="reference">[15]</sup></small></dd><dd><small>3 Reserve to Production ratio (in years), calculated as reserves / annual production. (from above)</small></dd></dl></td></tr></tbody></table>There's this, too:

http://www.runet.edu/~wkovarik/oil/

To begin with, one of the most revealing speeches about world oil reserves went unremarked in 2006. The head of the world's largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, said:
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]“We are looking at more than four and a half trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. That number translates into 140 years of oil at current rates of consumption, or to put it anther way, the world has only consumed about 18 percent of its conventional oil potential. [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]That fact alone should discredit the argument that peak oil is imminent and put our minds at ease concerning future petrol supplies.” [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"The Impact of Upstream Technological Advances on Future Oil Supply" - Mr. Abdallah S. Jum'ah, President & Chief Executive Officer, Saudi Aramco, address to OPEC, Vienna, Austria, Sept. 13, 2006. [/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]What does it mean? Why does his view of world reserves conflict so dramatically with the oil industry's view? [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Probably most important for world oil policy, the Middle East does not necessarily have two thirds of all world oil reserves, as has long been claimed by the oil companies and the US Dept. of Energy. It only has two thirds of "proven" oil reserves which are far smaller than the potential reserves Jum'ah describes.[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

[/FONT]
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<table border="0" bordercolor="#000000" cellpadding="6" height="491" width="1189"><tbody><tr bgcolor="#cccccc"> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" height="198" width="407">

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
The "traditional" view (British Petroleum). [/FONT]​

</td> <td bordercolor="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff" height="198" width="752">
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]

</td> </tr> <tr bgcolor="#cccccc"> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" height="66" width="407">[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Here is the conventional view of proven world oil reserves, 2002, British Petroleum. [/FONT]</td> <td bordercolor="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff" height="66" width="400">[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Here is a more geologically accurate picture of world oil reserves that adds US Geological Survey figures for recoverable and unconventional oil reserves. [/FONT]</td></tr></tbody></table>

 

I hear treehugger.com raises money to polish all the trees in the forest.

 

From my previous post:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]What does it mean? Why does his view of world reserves conflict so dramatically with the oil industry's view? [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Probably most important for world oil policy, the Middle East does not necessarily have two thirds of all world oil reserves, as has long been claimed by the oil companies and the US Dept. of Energy. It only has two thirds of "proven" oil reserves which are far smaller than the potential reserves Jum'ah describes.[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

And drill baby drill isn't the complete answer.[/FONT] It seems silly to me to sit around in the dark without air conditioning while we wait for the greenest alternative energy sources to actually make sense.

http://sportstwo.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1661609&postcount=5

(A response to T. Boone Pickens's plan to spend $1.2T on wind farms)

First, I would come up with a comprehensive strategy for deploying hundreds of new nuclear power plants.

This strategy would include studying what's been successful in France (where they generate most of their power via nuclear) and adjust our badly thought out and outdated regulations. For example, the French reprocess their spent fuel into more energy and less lethal waste and our regulations forbid that.

A key part of the strategy would be to come up with a single blueprint for all these reactors and to build the exact same plant over and over again. This would streamline just about everything there is to building the plants as well as safety monitoring of the plants once they're online.

As our energy requirements increase over time, which they surely will, we use the same blueprint to build more plants.

The French have been disposing of nuclear waste for decades and nobody's ever heard of any accidents there or repercussions from storing the waste. It's not rocket science; it's proven and safe.

There's an obvious construction boom to be had in building these plants and manufacturing the parts to build them.

Second, if we're going to spend $1.2T to address the problem, use it to subsidize people buying electric cars and research into better and better batteries.

With all the really cheap electricity produced by the new nuclear power plants, charging up the batteries for electric cars would be cheap and no need to ration who gets to fill up (by price).

We already have a fairly robust infrastructure for distributing electricity. It's not much work for an electrician to install circuit breakers and outlets in parking lots and other obvious places to let people charge up their batteries.

It'd be an obvious boost to Detroit where we once had a manufacturing powerhouse for automobiles. Someone has to build these electric cars, after all.

A simple back of the envelope kind of calculation. $1T buys 10,000,000 electric cars at $100,000 per. It subsidizes 1/2 the cost of 20M cars. Would an electric car really cost $100,000 mass produced? No, more like $25,000 or less. At $25,000, $1T buys 40M cars, of subsidizes 1/2 the cost of 80M cars. Now we're talking!

For most people who commute, electric cars are more than adequate. A range of 200 miles on a single charge isn't far fetched, if not already achieved. Most people might commute 100 miles per day (both ways) or far less.

Third, we have to exploit other energy sources here at home.

Electric cars charged by nuclear power plants isn't the be-all, end-all solution to our energy needs. We're still going to need gas powered vehicles for industrial purposes and other situations where the limited range of electric vehicles will not suffice. For example, a truck moving some goods across country isn't going to be workable if it's electric powered. There are other jobs where people need to travel more than 1,000 miles per week, so gas vehicles are their only option.

There's absolutely no reason not to drill for oil where it is, even if it's 2-10 years before it is available at the pumps. No matter what you say now, in 2-10 years if we're in a worse situation, we'll be wishing we drilled today.

Though I call solar a scam, there is some value to it as part of a comprehensive plan. The energy cost of making them no longer is an issue, since we get plenty from the nuclear power plants. Petroleum (that we're drilling for now) is a key component of plastics like those the solar panels are made from. They may have a better application as a means to extend the range of electric cars by 10 miles per charge, which is worth considering.

Fourth, if there's a need for a Manhattan Project for energy research, it's batteries.

Double the charge a battery can hold and electric cars become some combination of lighter and more range. Double their life span and we'll save ourselves the hassle of replacing batteries every 3-5 years.