CyNeos:
Oil reserves are counted as proven only if they are commercially exploitable. Oil found in areas that the States or the Federal Government prohibit exploration in are not counted as proven. There could be 1 trillion barrels of oil off the California Coast but they would be counted as proven since you can’t exploit them. If the Government lifted the ban on drilling the quantity of proven conventional oil reserves would go up dramatically.
There are proven reserves of at least 800 billion barrels of oil in exploitable oil shale lands in the west. This is the minimum number. That is over a century’s consumption there could be as much as 2 trillion barrels in those lands. You can also extract liquid hydrocarbon fuels from our several centuries’ worth of coal.
One of the first things that President Bush did when he assumed office was to set up an energy commission which came up with energy plan that was stonewalled by the Democrats. They didn’t like the fact that energy, not just oil companies, were involved. This probably comes as a shock to CyNeos but Oil companies are in business to produce oil. One wonders where CyNeos believes the gasoline in his car comes from. Does he think that it just materializes from thin air?
