My take? Alternative energy is fine. Good to a point. But not price competitive by a long shot – that’s why that field died in the 70s when the tax credits panned out (and my solar water heater panned out too when the company went bust). That’s also why the solar, wind, biofuels folks are all jumping for joy as that $700 Billion monstrosity of a bailout bill (yeah, THAT worked out so well this week, eh?) was passed. Because it did, their precious tax credits were extended.
And they all knew it – without the subsidy of the Feds, they’d be rolling over and closing the doors.
But that’s not the point of this post. What is, is the misinformation from both T. Boone Pickens and Barack Obama over their claims that we way overuse oil with respect to world’s reserves.
IBD takes them both to task (emphasis mine):
Just as he said during the Sept. 26 University of Mississippi debate with John McCain, the Illinois Democrat claimed during the Nashville town hall setting that "we have 3% of the world’s oil reserves and we use 25% of the world’s oil. So what that means is that we can’t simply drill our way out of the problem."
It’s disappointing that McCain failed to call out Obama on his figures, because he had an opening big enough to drive an Exxon Mobil tanker truck through.
The problem isn’t Obama’s claim about consumption. The U.S. does go through about a quarter of the oil used across the globe (it also, by the way, produces 28% of the world’s goods and services, but that’s another story).
No, the real problem is that the oft-repeated claim of the U.S. having 3% or less of world reserves doesn’t stand up.
Obsolete figures show that the U.S. holds just 20 billion of the 1.3 trillion barrels of the world’s crude reserves.
But that doesn’t include the estimated 200 billion barrels of oil trapped below two miles of shale in the Bakken Formation, a wildly rich reserve that stretches through Montana and North Dakota.
Neither do Obama’s shock data include the more than 130 billion barrels off our coasts that Congress had placed off limits, nor the 1.2 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of shale oil in the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
And we haven’t even mentioned Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where 10 billion to 20 billion barrels of easily tapped oil have been sitting idle for decades because a majority of policymakers are cowed by pressure from environmental groups and won’t allow drilling in this remote and desolate area.
At one time, Canada was ranked 21st in global oil reserves. It is now second, behind only Saudi Arabia. Its ranking jumped when the U.S. Energy Department formally recognized that the Canadian tar sands hold about 175 billion barrels of oil that is recoverable with current technology under recent economic conditions.
Where will the U.S., currently 11th in the world, land in the rankings when politicians and radical special interests can no longer deny geological and technological realities?
Make your arguments – just do it with up-to-date facts. Problem is, facts seem to make arguments burn up and go away….
It certainly seems that we conceivably have a lot more oil than the Greens want us to think we have – after all, that would have us beholden to their idea of how Americans should live instead of what could be.
It also makes politicians look silly….
(H/T: NRO)
