Long term oil reserves in the United States

This is my first thread!

The other day in college my professor said that the U.S. has enough oil in reserve to power the entire nation for over a decade and that this fact is being suppressed so that people do not further question the unreasonable price of gas in light of the amount of profit the oil companies are making.

Is this true, does such an enormous reserve exist? If it does, isn't it secret because it is meant solely for emergencies once natural oil reaches its peak and drilling can no longer meet demand?

I'm inclined to ask in light of two recent CNN articles.

Hunting for oil beneath the ice

There's a new rush for petroleum from Alaska to the North Pole. Can ConocoPhillips and other energy giants find another Saudi Arabia under the ice?
money.cnn.com...

Gas engines: Here to stay

Despite its limitations, the internal combustion engine won't be pushed aside so easily, but it can be made better.
money.cnn.com...

Thanks!

Yes, there is a massive reserve in the U.S.
Take a look at the Department of Energy web page, but I'll post some salient points.

www.fossil.energy.gov...

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the largest stockpile of government-owned emergency crude oil in the world. Established in the aftermath of the 1973-74 oil embargo, the SPR provides the President with a powerful response option should a disruption in commercial oil supplies threaten the U.S. economy. It also allows the United States to meet part of its International Energy Agency obligation to maintain emergency oil stocks, and it provides a national defense fuel reserve.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 directed the Secretary of Energy to fill the SPR to its authorized one billion barrel capacity. This required the Department of Energy to complete proceedings to select sites necessary to expand the SPR to one billion barrels.

The Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve is a 2-million barrel supply of emergency fuel oil for homes and businesses in the northeastern United States. Established in 2000, the Heating Oil Reserve is an "emergency buffer" that can supplement commercial fuel supplies should the heavily oil-dependent region be hit by a severe heating oil supply disruption. Since its creation, the Heating Oil Reserve has not been used, but 35,000 barrels were sold during 2007 for budgetary reasons. The Government will use the proceeds from the sale to repurchase a quantity of heating oil in the future.

You also have to consider the considerable amount of oil and fuel that is in the system. Either on tankers, in storage tanks at refiners, in pipelines, being processed, fuel already delivered and stored by private industry, etc....
The U.S. also has agreements in place with friendly nations like Canada to keep oil flowing into the country if the proverbial poop hits the fan, and U.S. production could also be ramped up in a crisis.

Americans could also go into severe conservation mode in an emergency.

I don't have a figure on U.S. consumption, but they certainly have a reserve and the ability to draw out the supplies they have on hand.

The Bakken formation in North Dakota is estimated to hold between 150 to 500 billion barrels of oil. This formation alone could represent an 10 fold increase in US reserves. Link

The Green River Basin oil shale formation, spanning an area between Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, is estimated to contain 1.5 trillion barrels of oil, though oil shale is much more difficult to extract than conventional oil.

An interesting and much overlooked point about oil shale is it's Areal Energy Density. When comparing Colorado's oil shale deposit to Alaska's North Slope reserve, we see an approximate 20 fold increase in barrels/acre (see source link Fig.3). At it's richest concentrations, it is estimated that oil shale can contain in excess of 1 million barrels/acre.
Source .PDF

I highly recommend the above link. It really opened my eyes to the options which oil shale presents as an alternative source of oil. While the challenges are many, the present cost of oil is allowing oil shale to be a viable alternative to our current sources.


Edit: Add Link and fix incorrect statement.
[edit on 3-5-2008 by SystemiK]

[edit on 3-5-2008 by SystemiK]

Yes! As soon as all the oil runs dry in the world the Evil United States will rule the world with it's massive oil supply and prices will be $50.00 a liter ( not gallon) for the poor and $20.00 a liter for the rich.

Give thanks to all the environmentalists for that. We can't drill 40 miles off the coast of Florida. Could you imagine seeing those oil drills floating out there while you're vacationing in the tropics? And drilling in one little spot in Alaska will definitely kill everything that's not around there anyway. I say drill for it. but there environmentalist who has already made refineries stop and switch over different grades of fuel for different states and make the process slow going say NO! It's up to this country to make a decision or pay higher prices. If the environmentalist can protest to stop the drilling then why can't others protest to start the drilling? Maybe the environment out weighs the drilling but what do we do?

[edit on 5/3/2008 by Solarskye]

reply to post by HybridEB


I think your professor is a dumbass. Ask for your money back. Thats a waste of tuition money right there. We consume roughly 7.65 BILLION barrels annually. Our proven reserves are marked at around 2 Billion.

7.65(billion barrels per year consumed) x10(years)x1.02(rate at which oil consumption seems to be going) =78 BILLION barrels consumed over a decade. This would be about a third of what OPEC puts out annually; and it has HUGE reserves.

Is it possible that the government may be hiding 80 billion barrels somewhere? eehhh.....mmmmmmmmmm........mmmmmmmaybe.. But not bloody likely.

I think if we had 80 billion barrels to shell out, we would be part of OPEC, not against it.

If you want people to focus less on oil, tell them to stop driving and stop buy more # they dont need. Sadly Americans are lazy with consumer oriented mentalities...thus they have a high demand for oil.

People would much rather buy cool stuff and drive all over the #ing place than care about nature or animals or the millions of other organisms we share the planet with. However, when people # with nature too much, nature likes to # back.

Go drill that #, grab your black gold, kill the caribou, pollute your cities, and then sit back and watch what the planet does. I hope you enjoy the show.

Originally posted by TreeHuggerLtd.
If you want people to focus less on oil, tell them to stop driving and stop buy more # they dont need. Sadly Americans are lazy with consumer oriented mentalities...thus they have a high demand for oil.

People would much rather buy cool stuff and drive all over the #ing place than care about nature or animals or the millions of other organisms we share the planet with. However, when people # with nature too much, nature likes to # back.

Go drill that #, grab your black gold, kill the caribou, pollute your cities, and then sit back and watch what the planet does. I hope you enjoy the show.

If it was up to you environuts we would be living like cave men.

Having reserves and producing oil are two totally different points. Oil from shale destroys the land from vast strip mining. Not really a bad thing in Wyoming or Colorado, unless you live there. Oil in northern plains is very deep. Too deep for conventional drill.

At $200+ a barrel, it is economic sense to develop these resources. At current prices, not so much a reason.

What class were you in, marketing, ecology, or ???