America Needs A (Shale) Oil Change
The Bear on Aug 04 2008 at 8:26 am | Filed under: Energy Policy
Oil Development: In boldly announcing plans to unlock the crude in America’s vast shale-oil reserves, President Bush is showing real leadership. Now only Congress stands in the way of a brighter energy future.
Bush on Tuesday said he wants to remove all barriers to extracting the oil thought to be trapped in shale rock formations in a swath of territory encompassing parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.
The quantity of oil to be found in this shale is almost unfathomable. The government conservatively puts it at 800 billion barrels. Other estimates say we have as much as 2 trillion barrels, though some of that wouldn’t be recoverable.
As the chart shows, that could potentially give the U.S. oil reserves equal to three times those of Saudi Arabia. Indeed, it would be more oil than in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Iraq and Mexico combined.
These reserves, if fully exploited, could ensure America’s energy needs for at least the next century, and possibly longer.
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