LEANING RIGHT-We know from Albert Einstein that it is the mark of insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A corollary is that if we stand around doing nothing we can also get the same results. Both are signs of insanity.
For years we have stood on our shores like penguins watching our hard currency flow to the Middle East to purchase oil. On occasion the penguins blinked their eyes and feigned intelligence while glancing at each other. All the while, the hard currency just kept flowing. All the while, we are sitting on a gold mine of oil right here in the United States.
The Paris based Internal Energy Agency says the United States will overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world’s biggest oil producer before 2020, and will become energy independent 10 years later.
North America will become a net exporter of oil around 2030 despite the blinking and glancing of the current administration while feigning intelligence. In fact, the current administration has ignored the availability of Canadian Keystone oil while maintaining a love affair with the Middle East.
The United States, which currently imports around 20% of its total energy needs, from countries who hate us, becomes all but self sufficient in net terms.
We are experiencing an oil boom, in large part thanks to high world prices and new technologies, including hydraulic fracking, that have made the extraction of oil and gas from shale rock viable.
From 2008 to 2011, U.S. crude oil production jumped 14% according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Natural gas is up by about 10% over the same period.
The US is currently sitting on an estimated 2 trillion barrels of oil buried beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Geologists, petroleum companies and the federal government have known about these massive deposits for nearly a century. The trouble has always been: how do you get at it?
Still, if only half can be extracted, scientists believe the amount is nearly triple the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.
These facts don’t consider the hundreds of years worth of oil within the borders of the US that sit thanks to the current administration.
The United States has massive oil reserves but the current administration doesn’t give a darn. The United States is possibly sitting on trillions of barrels of oil. Five years ago, if someone told you the U.S. would be independent in 15 years, you might have thought that person was crazy. But thanks in large part to technological advancements in drilling, it's very possible that North America could be energy independent by 2020. Given this fundamental change, if I were to tell you that America may have an oil source that's more than the rest of the world's combined proven reserves, would you believe it?
The EIA estimates that there are about 2.9 trillion barrels of recoverable oil deposits worldwide, and nestled tight within the Wind River, Unita, and Wasach Mountains of Wyoming and Colorado is the largest oil deposit in the world, with about 1.8 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil. If all of this oil were economically recoverable, we could supply U.S. energy demand for more than 250 years based on current demand.
The Northern Rockies region covers a wide variety of rock types, geologic structures and petroleum potential. Idaho does not have any known commercial deposits of oil and gas, while at the opposite end of the spectrum in the region is Wyoming, the leading oil producing state in the Northern Rocky Mountains.
None of this takes into account the known oil reserves in Alaska, the east coast states, the oil off the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the oil off the west coast, or the oil reserves in the western states.
In the meantime we wait. Can anyone get me a lemon aide as we stand here in the sand?
(Kay Martin is an author and a CityWatch contributor. His new book, Along for the Ride, is now available. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 103
Pub: Dec 24, 2013