“I’ve been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of,” states Mr. T. Boone Pickens of PickensPlan.org, which is surprising coming from the self proclaimed “oil man.” This is a popular phrase amongst extreme-leftists including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. I’d like to examine this phrase, which I believe is false based in part on a 2005 RAND study which on page eleven of the PDF reads:
For potentially recoverable oil shale resources, we roughly derive an upper bound of 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and a lower bound of about 500 billion barrels. For policy planning purposes, it is enough to know that any amount in this range is very high. For example, the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day. If oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand, 800 billion barrels of recoverable resources would last for more than 400 years.
Triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia sounds like enough oil to cure United States of foreign oil addiction. As an ironic aside, many of the same people who chant, “No War for Oil,” don’t support drilling for oil domestically. These two positions are fine together as long as you don’t want: to drive a car, have food delivered to your grocery store, plastic, or a functioning economy, among other things I don’t believe these people go without.
Do not mistake me, I like Picken’s Plan, and I support his efforts, but I don’t think he needs to make what I believe are erroneous statements in order to (I’m speculating) drum up support from radical environmentalists and extreme-leftists. We can’t just sunbathe and blow our way out of the problem either. (referring to Solar and Wind if you didn’t catch the analogy) I think we should implement Picken’s Plan in addition to drilling here and drilling now, building nuclear power plants, increasing fuel efficiency of automobiles, developing hybrids, hydrogen fuels, as well as bio-fuels.
I’ve contacted Mr. Picken’s questioning his rationale behind this statement, and look forward to reading his reply. With his permission, I will post that reply here.
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Tags: Energy Independence, Gasoline Prices, Pickens Plan, Politics
