The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #82615   Message #1516159
Posted By: GUEST,Larry K
06-Jul-05 - 10:35 AM
Thread Name: BS: In Its Last Throes (Political)
Subject: RE: BS: In Its Last Throes (Political)
All this talk about oil is just really silly.   Oil was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1859.   From 1859 to 1960 the USA was the largest producer of oil in the world.

We have currently used about 1 trillion barrels.   According to most experts we have 1 trillion barrels left.   We currently use 30 billion barrels of oil a year.   Do the math- that gives us 33 years. But its worse than that.   Due to India and China oil usage is increasing by 1 billion barrels a year.   Therefore we have less time.

70% of all the oil in the USA is gone.   All the major discoveries in the USA were in the 1930's.   The Gulf of Mexico and Alaska are relatively small (good finds but still small)   There are 4,500,000 oil wells in the world with about 3,500,000 in the USA.   There are no major discoveries to be made.   The only possibilities are Iran or Iraq where politics has not less us explore.   

Lets assume we are completely wrong and there are 2 trillion barrels left.   That only buys us another 11 years.   Meanwhile they are spending 10's of billions of dollars in the tar flats in Calgary to get oil.   Would the experts be spending that amount of money if there were other oil finds that were easy to get?

The point is that oil is running out in our lifetime.   Debating how to buy us another few years from Iraq oil is really silly.   Anyone making that argument clearly does not understand the facts.