So, I indicated that much of my work was back of the napkin math. I am not a petroleum engineer, but I can interpret data from reports. But this is MUCH better. Here are hard numbers, with hard facts to digest. Check out these links.
Summary Page
Really Cool Interactive Thing
Really Hard Numbers on Petroleum Supply and Consumption
What do these things tell me? One, Holy Shit we use a lot of oil. Little Timmy Kempo is crying about China, but they appear to be using only 7.2 mbpd, while we use 20.687 mbpd. In fact, if you look at the top consumers of oil in the world. We are clearly number one (go America!) but whats really cool is that our total daily consumption is equal to the combined consumption of the next top 5. This means that our use equals China, Japan, Russia, Germany and India combined.
WOW! Thats a surprising number.
So lets look at our analysis, with some fresh data. Intellectual Honesty being paramount in a good debate. So, my basic argument is that it makes more sense to improve efficiency than it does to produce a new oil source. Though I believe safely developing domestic sources makes sense, it isn’t a panacea, which is why I advocate/argue that efficiency is the best ROI.
So, some numbers.
First, you should look at this page here. Why shows total reserves, and how much they are producing. What is interesting to note here is that total proved reserves are 20 billion barrels (so my napkin calc is good here). Also, US production from those reserves is 1.652 billion barrels annually, or an average of 4.53 million bpd (although in another section, this chart indicates 5.1 million bpd, I think the diffence comes in strategic reserves, but it isn’t clear ). Other important things to take away.
- Total Reserves are reducing at a rate of 1 billion barrels per year
- Additions to proved reserves have tailed off significantly. Last year only 30 million barrels of new reserves were found.
- US Production has been decreasing, slowly, but with on big loss around Katrina time (think loss of gulf production as a result of the storms).
Now, lets look at imports. Net US Imports (Imports minus any exports we make) are approximately 12.04 million bpd (or around 4.395 Billion Barrels annually). Hence we are consuming, on average, 6.047 billion barrels annually.
What does this imply? First, if we magically tapped all our reserves, and stopped importing oil from foreign countries, we would consume all of our reserves in less than 4 years. NOT A GOOD IDEA. But since we can’t magically turn on these fields, we need to look at what we can do. So lets say you want to increase domestic production and somehow lower prices. Well, lets see what that means.
First, those other top consumers, their consumption is not remaining flat, but has been increasing. So, to just hold steady, we need to match that rise in consumption, or lower our own consumption, or do both. To make prices go down (from a strictly supply oriented standpoint, we need to do more of those options).
From these numbers, lets look at the US Gasoline usage data. From this chart, we can see that US Finished Petroleum Production (ie what is refined for US use) is 6.745 Billion Barrels annually, of which 3.391 Billion Barrels is Gasoline (50%). As a check against earlier numbers, that implies 390 million gallons of gasoline per day on average for consumption by US drivers.
So, this validates the basic argument. Improve efficiency by 33% (ie. upgrade average fuel economy from 22.4 to 30 mpg) and you reduce annual fuel consumption by 5.27 million barrels per day, or 1.923 billion barrels annually. Thats 10% of our entire US petroleum proved supply.
Now, if you want to argue against that, you can’t use “There is a lot of oil out there” or “More oil will improve the situation”. Use some numbers to back up your assertion, or you are just wanking. Man, debating is fun!
