Remember when Obama said that we have “2 percent of the world’s oil reserves”?
This is an excerpt from his own speech:
As a country that has 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, but uses 20 percent of the world’s oil — I’m going to repeat that — we’ve got 2 percent of the world oil reserves; we use 20 percent. What that means is, as much as we’re doing to increase oil production, we’re not going to be able to just drill our way out of the problem of high gas prices. Anybody who tells you otherwise either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or they aren’t telling you the truth.
Now let’s find out who doesn’t know what they’re talking about and who isn’t telling the truth.
The Government Accountability Office – a department of the federal government – tells us the facts.
Excerpt:
The Green River Formation, a largely vacant area of mostly federal land that covers the territory where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world’s proven reserves combined, an auditor from the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Thursday.
The GAO testimony said that the federal government was in “a unique position to influence the development of oil shale” because the Green River deposits were mostly beneath federal land.
[…]It also noted that developing the oil would have an environmental impact and pose “socioeconomic challenges,” that included bringing “a sizable influx of workers who along with their families put additional stress on local infrastructure” and “making planning for growth difficult for local governments.”
“The Green River Formation–an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming–contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale,”Anu K. Mittal, the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment said in written testimony submitted to the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.
“USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions,” Mittal testified.
“The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered,” Mittal told the subcommittee. “At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.”
In her oral statement before the subcommittee, Mittal said that developing the shale oil would create wealth and jobs for the country, but also challenges for government.
“Being able to tap this vast amount of oil locked within this formation will go a long way to help to meet our future demands for oil. The U.S. Geological Survey, as you noted, estimates that the formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil of which half may be recoverable,” she said.
“As you can imagine having the technology to develop this vast energy resource will lead to a number of important socioeconomic benefits including the creation of jobs, increases in wealth and increases in tax and royalty payments for federal and state governments,” she said.
[…]In her written testimony, Mittal noted that three-fourths of the Green River shale oil is under federal land.
Is Barack Obama a good President? Does he know how to be President? Does he understand economics?
Let’s look at the national debt and the labor force participation rates in Obama’s first term. Recall that the Republicans lost the House and Senate in January of 2007. At the time of the Pelosi/Reid takeover, the national debt was $8 trillion. It is now almost double that at $16 trillion.
If these numbers seem bad to you, then I don’t think you should vote for Obama.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Heard the other day that Obama had claimed the republican budget would ‘force millions of mothers and children’ to have no access to safe food, among other horror stories.
The fun part was that he prefaced his statement with ‘if the cuts were spread evenly’. The budget dealt with upcoming proposed spending. It was not spread evenly at all.
Didn’t stop our president from totally misleading people for no other reason than political gain. But hey, he’s transparent, right? I mean, in the sense that unlike some other politicians who are talented at damage control and cover-ups, you can see straight through his claims without much effort.
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Aside from winning the political ideology battle….
First, watch the presentation of the data (even if accurate, which I sometimes have found these kind of things not to be after a bit of research): ESTIMATE that half MAY be recoverable (depending on TECHNOLOGY available?) compared to PROVEN oil RESERVES. Notice the good bit of smoke and mirrors employed to get the wanted level of contrast. And, are we counting on yet to be developed technology here? Isn’t that often a talking point against other forms of energy development… that they may be viable some day, but for now, count on proven technologies… such as oil and other fossil fuels?
Second, one might want to google ‘Green River Formation’ and check the scale of this. Given that oil shale extraction is problematic in many ways (cost, damage to the environment, etc.), doesn’t this seem a bit desperate? Are we really going to try to mine the oil from an area the size of typical Western state? Why not put some of this effort and expense into other technologies? (Oh, I forgot, political ideology… oil good, everything else bad… oil good, everything else bad.)
While I’m just as opposed to Obama and environmentalists twisting the data and story in an attempt to shut down fossil fuel (and, for the record, I agree Obama is one of the worst presidents for quite some time), I’m also opposed to crazy attempts to use fossil fuel at all costs. One gets the impression sometimes that the idea is to burn as much oil as possible, incur maximum environmental damage, and resist anything else, just to spite the other side. How about a Christian ideology (or even a common sense one), rather than a Republican or Democratic one?
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How about the federal government auctions off the land and the decisions are made by private individuals and the free market, and three hundred million Americans don’t all have to agree on whether this or that particular technology or venture is worth the costs?
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re: private individuals and ‘free market’ taking care of it – A few problems… first, capitalism doesn’t have a great track-record at protecting the environment. Second, unless you really somehow quantify those kind of factors (impact on people and the environment), the market won’t be free, as you hope. Third, since the so-called ‘free market’ isn’t really free, fossil fuel based solutions are currently the easier path, even if they shouldn’t be (otherwise they wouldn’t try something crazy like this). In a fallen world, ‘free markets’ are a fallacy. So, we need regulations in an attempt to push them as close as possible.
So, before I’d want to make a decision on something like this, I’d want to see what the impact will be. I’d want to look at the real potential and tradeoffs, not a BS presentation of rhetorically crafted ‘facts.’ I’d want to know why the area is federally protected. In other words, I’m not saying no, I’m saying I’m sick of playing political football with this kind of stuff. It’s just a lot more complicated than: ‘Our energy problems are solved, but that mean Obama just won’t let us solve them.’
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The federal government owns nearly 30% of the land in this country. There doesn’t have to be any special reason “why the area is federally protected”; the federal government just owns way too much land, and sits on it.
I can’t interpret the last sentence of your first paragraph here, but I understand that you’re saying if people are left free to do whatever they want, sometimes it will be bad for the environment. That’s true, and I agree that that’s too bad. The problem is that if the alternative is to have the government decide whether every given thing would be bad for the environment before letting us do it, then that seems to leave no room for freedom.
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But, if not the government… who gets to decide? The regulation aspect which keeps capitalism in check (i.e.: free) has to come from somewhere. I agree that government shouldn’t just hold a bunch of land for no reason. But, if there are some good reasons, I don’t see anyone else to do it.
And, then there is the side of me that realizes that most public companies (including the oil companies) are horribly short-term thinking oriented today. For us to move from oil dependency is going to take some initial investment that the energy companies aren’t going to be willing do when looking at maximizing quarter-to-quarter profits. So, a bit of a push needs to come from somewhere. Again, I’m not sure if the govt. sitting on land is that way to do it (and recognize that there is some kind of crazy thinking going on on that side of the fence as well, driving it). I’d go for putting some proper costs on the environmental side into the equation into effect and let capitalism take its course, but we’ve already proven that the we won’t let big, stupid companies fail either.
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“It also noted that developing the oil would have an environmental impact and pose ‘socioeconomic challenges,’ that included bringing ‘a sizable influx of workers who along with their families put additional stress on local infrastructure’ and ‘making planning for growth difficult for local governments.'”
Right, better just avoid the problem of all that messy prosperity and human flourishing. Come to think of it, wouldn’t government’s job be easiest if there were just no people at all?
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