JAN POLLER: WHY ARE WE IMPORTING ANY ENERGY? MUST READ AND SEE THE CHARTS

Posted By Ruth King on May 22nd, 2012

Why Are We Importing Any Energy?

Energy imports are terribly expensive in money, balance of payments, jobs and cost of goods. The Arab oil embargo of 1973 showed how costly it can be for the economy and for military strength. The only justifiable reason to import energy is if you do not have the resources domestically.

Just how expensive are our imports? In 2010, the U.S. imported about 3.4 billion barrels of oil. At $90 a barrel, that is about $300 billion a year. Using domestic oil brings that money home instead of funding many people who are hostile to us. It increases employment with the resulting increase in tax collections, social security and Medicare payments while reducing welfare payments and food stamps.

Do we have these resources? Yes, we do. We have more energy resources than any other country in the world. WE have oil, shale oil, natural gas and coal. Not covered here is Uranium for nuclear power plants.

Our president has repeatedly said that we have 2% of the world’s oil reserves. It used to be said that we had 3% or the world’s total reserves. This number refers only to fields that are in actual production. Our percentage of the world’s oil is meaningless. What counts is the amount we have vs. the amount we use. After all, if an immense field were found outside the United States, our percentage would go down but the amount of oil we have would stay the same.

The area covered by petroleum, natural gas and oil reserves is immense. One of the larger petroleum reserves are the Athabasca-Wabiskaw Oil Sands in Canada. They cover and area of 54,000 square miles – larger than England. This is what we need the keystone oil pipeline for.

The article below refers to another, more detailed document that is well worth reading.

North American Energy Inventory

Affordable energy is the lifeblood of a strong and vibrant economy, and the massive supply of available energy resources in North America means that the United States is literally sitting on the greatest hope to create jobs, revive our economy, and again lead the world in energy production. Yet recent years have been marked by increasingly onerous regulatory barriers to the promise of affordable domestic energy. Government policies have been built on flawed and static assumptions about energy resources, leading to a 40 year decline in energy production. Federal lands — both onshore and offshore — are locked in outdated moratoriums and other bureaucratic delays.

On Tuesday, December 6, 2011, the Institute for Energy Research released a groundbreaking report about North America’s vast energy resources. The facts of this report shatter the myth of energy scarcity and empower the American people — not politicians — to set the course for our energy future. With hundreds of years of supplies of affordable energy under our feet, and the ability to produce these resources safely and responsible, that future can be bright.
Fact Sheet on Inventory Video: Click Here

Executive Summary:

North America is blessed with enough energy supplies to promote and sustain economic growth for many generations. The government’s own reports detail this, and Congress was advised of our energy wealth when the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress released a report showing that the United States’ combined recoverable oil, natural gas, and coal endowment is the largest on Earth.

The amount of oil that is technically recoverable in the United States is more than 1.4 trillion barrels, with the largest deposits located offshore, in portions of Alaska, and in shale in the Rocky Mountain West. When combined with resources from Canada and Mexico, total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels.

That is more than the world has used since the first oil well was drilled over 150 years ago in Titusville, Pennsylvania. To put this in context, Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of oil in proved reserves. For comparative purposes, the technically recoverable oil in North America could fuel the present needs in the United states of seven billion barrels per year for around 250 years.

Moreover, it is important to note that that “reserves” estimates are constantly in flux. For example, in 1980, the U.S. had oil reserves of roughly 30 billion barrels. Yet from 1980 through 2010, we produced over 77 billion barrels of oil. In other words, over the last 30 years, we produced over 150 percent of our proved reserves.

Restrictions in the form of federal bans and leasing combined with declining offerings of lease acreage mean only about 2.2 percent of America’s offshore acreage is currently leased for production.

Proved reserves of natural gas in the United States and throughout North America are enormous, and the total amount of recoverable natural gas is even more impressive. The EIA estimates that the United States has 272.5 trillion cubic feet of proved reserves of natural gas. The total amount of natural gas that is recoverable in North America is approximately 4.2 quadrillion (4,244 trillion) cubic feet.

Given that U.S. consumption is currently about 24 trillion cubic feet per, there is enough natural gas in North America to last the United States for over 175 years at current rates of consumption.

Total supplies of natural gas in North America dwarf those of other countries. The United States, Canada, and Mexico have more technically recoverable natural gas resources than the combined total proved natural gas reserves found in Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan.

With respect to total recoverable resources, however, North America’s combined coal supplies are even more staggering. The United States, Canada, and Mexico have over 497 billion short tons of recoverable coal, or nearly three times as much as Russia, which has the world’s second largest reserves. North America’s recoverable coal resources are bigger than the five largest non-North American countries’ reserves combined (Russia, China, Australia, India, Ukraine).

North American recoverable coal could provide enough electricity for the United States for about 500 years at current levels of consumption.

While the US and North America contain enormous energy wealth, US policies have increasingly made exploration, development, production and consumption of that energy more difficult.