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Obviously, America would be in trouble. We’d have to subsist off of what we have stockpiled and what we can drill for domestically. But the government has planned ahead. Following the energy crisis of the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Energy started storing oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), a network of salt-dome caverns located around the Gulf of Mexico. The Reserve is meant to safeguard against a major shortage, and it currently holds more than 700 million barrels of crude oil.
That may sound like a lot, but we go through the stuff pretty quickly. The United States currently consumes more than 20 million barrels a day—more than any other country in the world. Factoring in the 5 million barrels a day that we currently produce at home, the Department of Energy estimates that the SPR could support America for 58 days.
The United States does have other sources of domestic oil that haven’t been tapped yet, but they wouldn’t sustain us for long, either. According to the United States Geological Survey, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska could be sitting on 4.3 to 11.8 billion barrels of oil. Again, that seems like a lot, but it would only keep us going for about a year at our current rate of oil consumption. More importantly, we can’t just access all of that oil immediately; it would have to be extracted gradually over a period of years.
All told, including offshore oil, there are at least 23 billion barrels of oil under U.S. territory (that we know of). Even if the United States could somehow get its hands on all of that oil in one fell swoop, and add that to the 700 million barrels in the SPR, we could only sustain our current rate of consumption for about three years before running dry.
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Comments (9)
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Don’t forget the Green River oil shale! It is estimated to be the largest shale depository in the world at over 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The only problem is the cost involved of heating the shale to turn it to oil, which of course uses oil…
(2007 Survey of Energy Resources, by the World Energy Council)
posted by Brandon on 7-8-2009 at 5:03 pm
Well that’s depressing. Thank God “hump day” is over.
posted by Jesse on 7-8-2009 at 5:50 pm
Drill baby Drill!!!
Oh wait, maybe that’s just an empty slogan and not such a great idea.
posted by Jonny on 7-8-2009 at 6:45 pm
Colonize, Baby, colonize.
posted by Jim on 7-8-2009 at 9:15 pm
I’d rather invest in something that has the possibility of lasting for more than 3 years.
posted by Steven on 7-9-2009 at 8:55 am
Actually, it’d last less than that. Israel has a right over the US strategic petroleum reserve, and can purchase oil for up to 5 years in an emergency.
“According to the 1975 Second Sinai withdrawal document signed by the United States and Israel, in an emergency the U.S. is obligated to make oil available for sale to Israel for up to 5 years.”
posted by Dave on 7-9-2009 at 9:26 am
wow. now i’m depressed.
posted by the creature on 7-9-2009 at 12:33 pm
If the US were cut off from oil imports altogether, it seems unlikely the SPR would be used for civilian use. More likely it would be used for military vehicles and movement of food supplies and the like.
posted by Zach on 7-9-2009 at 12:43 pm
Something like that needs to happen for people to realize that we need to start throwing serious money at the fields of photovoltaics and wind power. It stinks that a majority of the brilliant scientific minds in America are trying to figure out how to make things like the next best wrinkle cream. Now that’s sad.
posted by Garrett on 7-9-2009 at 4:55 pm