USA: Largest Oil Reserves

DeletedUser

In 2001 (I believe) the National Geological Survey found a startling fact: the USA has ten times the amount of oil Iraq has (or twice what Saudi Arabia has, if you prefer) laying around in Alaska and the Rockies. They also briefed Congress on this.

This is just (intended) to be a discussion about the veracity of this claim and how the oil trade in this country should be changed based on it. I first heard this on FOX News, so I'll try to find a site with proof that they found oil reserves like that.
 

DeletedUser

Thomas Franklin said:
In 2001 (I believe) the National Geological Survey found a startling fact: the USA has ten times the amount of oil Iraq has (or twice what Saudi Arabia has, if you prefer) laying around in Alaska and the Rockies. They also briefed Congress on this.

This is just (intended) to be a discussion about the veracity of this claim and how the oil trade in this country should be changed based on it. I first heard this on FOX News, so I'll try to find a site with proof that they found oil reserves like that.
Click to expand...

LMAO@ Fox.

However, if they can get the oil w/o killing all the wildlife, Im for it. However as far as I can recall no one was interested in cleaning up after an oil line broke up that way someplace.

I dont doubt that the US has a ton of oil. A year or so ago(I think) some farmers in PA found it under the ground on their farmland. I recall quite a few selling the land to the govt for a nice price.
 

DeletedUser

Yes, the OP sorry. I didn't want to waste too many words on this crap again.
 

DeletedUser

Elmyr, between the oil shale, Anwar, and offshore reserves there is a huge, untapped, domestic supply.

The Oil Shale is extremely deep, and current extraction methods are ineffecient at extracting it. Anwar is a protected wildlife refuge, and the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico have blocked attempts to set up more off-shore drilling.

Also, permits to increase refinery capacities have been delayed and refused in the past, resulting in huge price increases in times of limited production (remember katrina, where all the refineries were without power?)
 

DeletedUser

DeletedUser

As far as I'm aware Hugo Chavez has the most down in Venezuela...

I wonder where you Yanks will invade next eh?
 

DeletedUser

Oil shale, as has been stated, doesn't yield crude oil but kerogen. The problem isn't that it's deep, the problem is that it's exploited by strip mining and open pit mines which are horribly destructive to the environment, in terms of obliterating the landscape as well as groundwater contamination. It also requires a lot of energy to extract the kerogen from the shale. The shale can also be heated in the ground to extract the oil, but it's also expensive, inefficient, and experimental.

The answer isn't to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, it's to reduce our dependence on oil and fossil fuels in general.
 

DeletedUser

Yes Nashy we all know what the Welsh get up to and yes, you're very good at it.










Baaaa
 

DeletedUser

if the u.s has so much alleged oil why the continued involvement in the middle east why the attempted coup in venezuala
 

DeletedUser

They don't really have all that oil. Well, they sort-of have it, but even then, they can't get it without doing serious damage.

EDIT: I got some spooky rep for this post. It was anonymous, and it was grey. Who knows what the mystery man/woman/both/neither thought of my post?
 
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DeletedUser

Thomas Franklin said:
In 2001 (I believe) the National Geological Survey found a startling fact: the USA has ten times the amount of oil Iraq has (or twice what Saudi Arabia has, if you prefer) laying around in Alaska and the Rockies. They also briefed Congress on this.

This is just (intended) to be a discussion about the veracity of this claim and how the oil trade in this country should be changed based on it. I first heard this on FOX News, so I'll try to find a site with proof that they found oil reserves like that.
Click to expand...

Okay, I've yet to find the report on the USGS website (all the numbers and statistics bogs my mind down) but here's the claim:

The revise US Geological Service, in 2008, did a revised report (the last one was in 1995) on the abundance of oil in the United States. In the 2/3 of western North Dakota (or would that be Northwest Dakota?), western South Dakota, and eastern Montana there are roughly 503 billion barrels of oil (worth 53.8 trillion dollars if all of it was extracted). Needless to day, this is enough to end American dependence on foreign oil AND become the largest oil exporter in the world.

This equals:
8 times what Saudi Arabia has
18 times what Iraq has
21 times what Kuwait has
22 times what Iran has
500 times what Yemen has
If the US capitalized on this, supply and demand would crush OPEC.
Also, Montana legislators WERE told of this (just Montana, but if they cared they would have reported it to National legislators).

The report is supposed to be at the online Stansberry Report (4/20/2006).
 

DeletedUser

Also, the USA can get it out without destroying the environment. I'd say its the Democratic Party not wanting us to use it (I don't know why, but it could be economy control or to keep the issue of drilling for more oil alive).
 

DeletedUser

if u tapped that amount of oil theprice would collapse and the world economies with it
 

DeletedUser

Thomas Franklin said:
In 2001 (I believe) the National Geological Survey found a startling fact: the USA has ten times the amount of oil Iraq has (or twice what Saudi Arabia has, if you prefer) laying around in Alaska and the Rockies. They also briefed Congress on this.

This is just (intended) to be a discussion about the veracity of this claim and how the oil trade in this country should be changed based on it. I first heard this on FOX News, so I'll try to find a site with proof that they found oil reserves like that.
Click to expand...

Thomas Franklin said:
Okay, I've yet to find the report on the USGS website (all the numbers and statistics bogs my mind down) but here's the claim:

The revise US Geological Service, in 2008, did a revised report (the last one was in 1995) on the abundance of oil in the United States. In the 2/3 of western North Dakota (or would that be Northwest Dakota?), western South Dakota, and eastern Montana there are roughly 503 billion barrels of oil (worth 53.8 trillion dollars if all of it was extracted). Needless to day, this is enough to end American dependence on foreign oil AND become the largest oil exporter in the world.

This equals:
8 times what Saudi Arabia has
18 times what Iraq has
21 times what Kuwait has
22 times what Iran has
500 times what Yemen has
If the US capitalized on this, supply and demand would crush OPEC.
Also, Montana legislators WERE told of this (just Montana, but if they cared they would have reported it to National legislators).

The report is supposed to be at the online Stansberry Report (4/20/2006).
Click to expand...

err, if it's fox news, you really need to be extra careful. People gave CBS news and Dan Rather a very hard time for that one fiasco, I lose track of how many times Fox News has reported wrong information.

Here are the reports you mentioned, bottom line, it's not 503 billion barrels, it's 3.6 billion barrels.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3021/

actual PDF file of the report, listing possible locations, how many potential barrels, etc.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3021/pdf/FS08-3021_508.pdf

Another thing, having reserve is only part of the equation, how much does it cost to extract it? I am not even talking about environmental damage, but how cheaply can you extract oil?

People talk about extracting oil from A, B, C, how much does it cost? If it's in the sea, how deep is it? The deeper it is, the rougher the sea, the more expensive it is going to be to drill down and have a platform built to extract the oil from the sea.

Canada has a great abundance of "oil sands". The economist was talking about it, as early as 1990-1993, but the cost then was about $30 per barrel to extract those oil sand. That cost has since risen to about $50 per barrel in the past few years due to commodities price inflation (cost of steel, rubber, labor and other necessary material to "squeeze" the oil out of the sand has gone up, I had a friend who urged me to go to Canada, join him on this new oil riches a few years ago, they got paid rather well, just quite boring at times and it's up in the arctic area.)

Saudi Arabia can produce oil at a cost of pennies or a few dollars per barrel. Not every other country can be as blessed with such low production cost.
 
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