Drilling is just one example. Why not drill enough so and us our own natural resourses so we don't have to deal with countries that hate us anyway. Instead of putting them to work we could put our own to work. I do not believe by drilling we would wipe out any species of life with the new technolgies. Drill Baby Drill!!! Natural Gas is abundant in this country and runs cleaner than petroleum. It is proven to be able to run large trucks. This could be one solution. I know there are other solutions too. Win Win!!
The U.S. population is a major consumer of oil and the United States can't produce enough oil on its own to meet this demand. In 2008, the United States produced around 4.9 million barrels of crude oil per day [source: U.S. Energy Information Administration] -- that's almost two billion of barrels of crude oil for the year! However, the United States still has to import more than twice that amount to fill its business and consumer needs. Looking again at 2008, the United States imported around 9.8 million barrels of crude oil per day from other countries [source: U.S. Energy Information Administration], and that comes out to a whopping 3.5 billion barrels per year!
In 2009 America consumed 18,690,000.
[TABLE="class: body"]
[TR]
[TD="class: text, align: right"]Date[/TD]
[TD="class: text, align: right"]Amount[/TD]
[TD="class: text, align: right"]World
Consumption Rank[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]
2009[/TD]
[TD="align: right"] 18,690,000[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]#1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: graphHl, align: right"]
2007[/TD]
[TD="class: graphHl, align: right"] 20,680,000[/TD]
[TD="class: graphHl, align: right"]#1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]
2005[/TD]
[TD="align: right"] 20,800,000[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]#1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: graphHl, align: right"]
2004[/TD]
[TD="class: graphHl, align: right"] 20,730,000[/TD]
[TD="class: graphHl, align: right"]#1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="align: right"]
2003[/TD]
[TD="align: right"] 20,030,000[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]#1[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: graphHl, align: right"]
2001[/TD]
[TD="class: graphHl, align: right"] 19,650,000[/TD]
[TD="class: graphHl, align: right"]#1[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The Bakken oil field is the biggest oil field we have at 503 billion barrels (estimated) and not all of that is even recoverable. Oh yeah, 503 Billion is an impressive number, right?? Check this out: the USGS estimates that there are only 3,649 million barrels of technically recoverable oil in the entire US Bakken accumulation. Associated with the oil production are 1,850 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
Yeah that'll last past our life... But maybe not our kids' lives and definitely not our grandkids' lives... Only 182 years AT OUR CURRENT consumption, which is bound to rise. Besides, extraction is slow, and cannot be processed form source rock fast enough to keep up with demand... Sure things will be good for a while, but then we're right back where we are now... Hurting for the importing...
I agree that Natural Gas is a cleaner alternative, but guess where natural gas sits... Right on top of the oil and in MUCH less supply.
Then what? We only have 727 million barrels in the US oil reserves... That's about 36 years... That's in MY lifetime... America cannot produce enough oil to sustain our own hunger and must rely on outside producers to satiate it.
I, for one, think we all should think a little more long term.