The total number of proven and recoverable crude oil reserves within US territory is only 134 billion barrels which would only last 20 years at our current consumption rate. Want oil shale? Fine, but it loses nearly half of it’s fuel value in production so you might as well cut the reserve in half. There’s a very large amount that is theorized to exist, for example, in the Green River Formation but how much of this theortical deposit can be extracted is unknown. There’s a reason why no big oil company has been interested in oil shale since the 1970s; it’s expensive to extract, expensive to process, and difficult to sell.
Never know until you try.
I hear North Dakota is booming, btw.
Bottom line: You want enough oil to satiate American demand; you’d better be willing to kiss some dictator patutie. So if anyone is wondering why no one in the international community has said a peep about the Saudis murdering their own citizens and sending troops into Bahrain to murder protestors there; you have your answer.
It is a good thing that the people of the West recognize that they have interests in ME oil for sure, Europe more than America even. But the less dependent on this region, the better.
I am pretty sure that Bush I did enter in into Gulf War I at the behest of the Saudi princes, for example, but that idea didn’t sell to the America public.
The idea that filipina maids were getting raped in Kuwait did animate the American public to support the war, so that is what Bush I went with.
American self-interest in the security of the Saudi oil supply was still the same as it ever was, regardless of what the pretext of the military action was going to be.
That is what is known as marketing.
A vast expansion of nuclear power is neither economically or environmentally feasible. It takes ten years and $10-12 billion to build a single nuclear power plant, they are very expensive to operate, and just one plant produces 20 tons of radioactive waste every year. It also wouldn’t do much to resolve our reliance on foreign oil in this country unless the majority of drivers are using electric vehicles. 75% of oil consumption in this country is accounted for by transportation.
Other countries have done it quite well actually. The environmental lobby and the left have choked the development almost out of existence through their politics of fear wrapped up in red tape, but of all the ‘clean’ energies, this is the one that has the most potential.
It needs a political will though, to get the ball rolling.
Want electric cars?
Then make the electricity to run them.
I am pretty sure that Americans are capable. What is lacking is the political leadership to counter the hysteria fostered by the left over the environmental and the like.
