House to look at opening US waters for drilling today.

[my73charger]

You can sign a petition to drill here. 

http://www.americansolutions.com/

Also, I heard that the President is calling on Congress today to lift the ban on offshore drilling.  I doubt it will happen but this idea isn't going away just yet.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,368221,00.html

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/18/bush.offshore/index.html

Good conversation guys.  We need to talk about it as it impacts all of us hard.  For my part, I have hardly had the Charger out yet this year and my Dodge Ram never moves, neither does the camper.  My wife has been walking to work (we live 2 blocks from where she works).  I have been using the car as it gets better gas mileage and I have to drive 6 miles.  I did ride my bike to work once but dang, I felt my age after that trip.  I will be doing it more often I am sure.  I am cutting back to save money and I am sure this is most everyone elses reason for doing so.  I do truly believe that our energy policy has to incorporate drilling though as well as searching for alternatives.

[rav440]

Congress can't do jack squat to cheapen gas in the big picture. 

Even if they found a supergiant field the size of Ghawar off the US coast, it would still take most of a decade for the major effects to hit oil the market.         

are you a congressman ?    somebody spued that same rederic 10 years ago . life would be better if they didnt have the " oh whats the use " train of thought .

either it will be better 10 years from now or it will be a whole hell of alot worse . i chose BETTER . 

[Mike DC]

 
The reason somebody spued that same redoric 10 years ago is because it's true. 




Congress can't put more oil in the ground and Congress can't delete Asia's growing demand.  Anything else they have control over is relatively small and short-term in comparison to that. 

Alaska has already been discussed a couple pages ago. 

 

[chargerboy69]

Rule number one: do not believe what the government tells you. The Department of Energy is lying to all of us. My brother, who just received a Doctorate degree in geological studies and subterranean land-mapping (or something to that effect) and graduated at the top of his class at The University of North Dakota, was telling me today as we were discussing this issue, that in North and South Dakota alone, there is enough shale oil to last 400 years. The United States, though, has not opened one new refinery in 32 years. Now, politically, I am neither left- nor right-leaning, but,

I am not sure if it will last 400 years, but there is a lot of oil shale up there. I have an immediate member in my family researching oil shale in the Dakotas and Montana. She has been working on it for almost two years now. According to those three states there is 400 billion barrels up there. And that is not the high end either. The high end is 600 billion barrels.

They were able to get a new refinery passed through the legislature last week to be built in South Dakota, but at the last minute Green Peace and the Sierra Club stepped in, and will now have it tied up for years in court. Thanks so much. 

[chargerboy69]

We don't have enough underground to produce more than we use. According to 2006 numbers from the Department of Energy, we have 21.757 billion barrels in "proved reserves". We are currently consuming about 21 million barrels per day (20,687,410) but importing 12 million (12,356,950) of those. If we just used our oil (provided we could pump it out of the ground fast enough) we'd run out in just under 1,052 days (35 months or 2.9 years). You wouldn't even have a new car halfway paid off yet.

Now I am curious who's numbers are correct here.


"Since 1982, Congress has passed laws banning the production of oil and natural gas on our Outer Continental Shelf; the last three presidents went along. But the US Minerals Management Service estimates (conservatively) that the OCS holds 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - the equivalent of 35 years of imported oil from OPEC and an 18-year supply of natural gas."


This is from Congressman John Petersons bill. The one that started this entire thread. Someone is BSing some numbers.

[Troy]

Notice what we're talking about here. As of 2006[.i]. the US imports 12 million total barrels per day. A big chunk of that comes from Canada and Mexico. In April 2008 (the latest data I can find), we were importing (daily) 1,952,000 barrels from Canada, 1,453,000 barrels from Saudi Arabia, 1,259,000 barrels from Mexico, 1,115,000 barrels from Nigeria, and 1,019,000 barrels from Venezuela. The top 15 list is here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html It says the top 5 countries supply 69% so some quick math shows we're importing less than 10 million barrels per day now.

What you found says "OPEC" which I never mentioned in my numbers. According to this: http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html, we are importing 5,517,000 barrels per day from OPEC countries. Doing math on your numbers (86 billion / 5.517 million) I get 15,588 days - or 42.7 years. Assuming our consumption increases I'd say that 35 years is probably a good guess.

Troy