|
And how many spills have there been since? Can anyone tell this event ever happened?
Like most politicians, Bush is a vote whore.
From 'Geodestinies' by Youngquist:
Myth: Don't drill this prospective field. Only 90 days of U.S. oil supply there
One of the most misleading arguments used against drilling a particular area is the statement that it would only supply X number of days or months of U.S. oil demand. Yet to the average citizen this is one of the most 'logical' reasons for not allowing drilling in a particular area. It is one of the most widely and most effectively used arguments against oil drilling. It appears frequently in numerous newspaper editorials and letters to the editor, and at public hearings.
With regard to the long-running debate about opening a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for oil exploration, in 1995, the president of a prestigious environmental organization said '...there may be at best only 90 days supply of oil for the U.S. There can be no justification to develop the arctic refuge.'(27) Let us pursue this argument.
Reality:
At the present time the U.S. uses about 18 million barrels of oil a day. A 100 million barrel oil field is regarded in the petroleum industry as a 'giant.' They have been discovered only infrequently. Yet if one of these giant oil fields was used to supply U.S. oil demand, it would last less than six days!
To put this in further perspective, at the present time only 15 oil fields in the United States have produced as much as a billion barrels of oil. This is done, of course, over a period of many years. But if the argument is applied that the oil field would only supply oil for a given length of time in the U.S., it should be noted that the oil from each of these 15 fields, if it could have theoretically been used alone at one time, would have only supplied the U.S., at its current rate of consumption of about 6.6 billion barrels a year, only about 57 days.
If the argument used by the president of the environmental organization was to be followed, there would be no oil drilling at all in the United States. These days, a ten million barrel oil field discovery is an important event in U.S. oil exploration. But that amount would last the U.S. less than 14 hours! The fact is, we are not discovering ten million barrel oil fields every 14 hours in the U.S. That is why our oil reserves are in decline. Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field ever discovered in North America, would have lasted the U.S. less than two years if it alone had been used.
But it is not possible to produce all the oil out of Prudhoe Bay or in any other field in 90 days, or six months or two years. If one divides the number of producing oil wells in the U.S. into the total proven U.S. reserves, each well has a reserve of about 38,500 barrels. These 38,500 barrels of oil, if they could be immediately produced, would supply U.S. oil demand for about three minutes. On this basis, it might be argued that none of these wells should have been drilled, in which case the U.S. would have no oil production. But oil supplies are produced over many years from many wells which make up the total U.S. production.
Each well makes a contribution, and each discovery serves to stretch out domestic supplies a little longer. Individually most fields, with the notable exception of the huge Prudhoe Bay Field, and each well produces an insignificant amount of oil relative to total U.S. production. But taken together they add up to the 6.4 million barrels a day now being produced.
People who use this argument presumably drive to work in gasoline-powered cars. Where do they want that gasoline to come from? People demand and use oil. With few significant prospective areas now still open to drilling in the U.S., where is the oil supposed to be obtained? Those who would curtail exploration first need to reflect on what is causing the huge and increasing demand on mineral and energy resources, and address that cause and not the symptoms of the problem. The cause is the resource demands of growing numbers of people, and the desire to continue to maintain the largely petroleum-based standard of living enjoyed by citizens of the industrialized nations. Use no oil and there is no need to drill. Otherwise drilling is necessary—somewhere. And each well and field are a necessary part of the total supply picture.
|
