[at-l] OT Alaskan Oil Drilling

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

At 06:09 PM 11/11/2004 -0500, J Bryan Kramer wrote:
>Gee 12000 million barrels divided by 20 doesn't come out to 13 hrs in my
>math. You must be using new math. Infact the wells would produce for over 25
>years at 1.5 MBD
>
>BK
>
>-------Original Message-----
>--
>-->"...The government estimates ANWR could hold between 5.7 billion and
>--16 billion barrels of oil. The U.S. market consumes about
>--20.4 million
>--barrels of oil a day."
>--
>--Assuming a mid range figure for total reserves and that I did
>--my arithmetic right, that means almost a 13 hour supply of
>--oil. Just think, we can extend the age of oil another 13
>--hours. How could anyone be opposed? What's a few caribou,
>--snow geese, and polar bears compared to that "huge" supply of oil?
>--
>--Weary

Bryan, you are a day late and several billion barrels short in pointing out 
Weary's math error which (I suspect) resulted from him misreading all three 
figures as being 'billions' when in fact the consumption figure was 
'millions'. In any case his calculation was total supply divided by daily 
use to determine how long the US would survive on that oil to see how long 
it would last if it were all that was available.

Calculating the output as a percentage of current use, the median estimate 
of the production would produce 800,000 BPD for about 28 years but that 
production level represents only 3.92% of our *CURRENT* daily consumption. 
That assumes of course that consumption does not rise in the 10 years to 
get the oil flowing and the 28 years that it is producing *and* (a very big 
AND) that the median estimate of the amount of oil is accurate. There is 
also a low estimate of 590 million BPD production exhausting the total 
supply in a bit over 15 years. So what's that amount to?  1.9% of our 
current daily consumption? There's a high estimate too but would you bet 
your pension on it? I wouldn't.

I think it's high time we looked seriously at conservation and 
alternatives. We should have done so in the '70s but I guess we (both as 
consumers and voters) are slow learners when it comes to our dependence on 
oil. Now if we would all just walk more that would be a start and it would 
give us time to ponder the problem. :)