ANWR hasn't been drilled either but the numbers you give as an estimate are more valid than what I gave for the OCS? The site I lised shows the numbers you gave for ANWR and they numbers I gave for OCS. They muct be right on one thing but not the other. And obviously it will be more firm after drilling which is currently not allowed and you didn't advocate because it wouldn't make a difference anyway, right? Glad to see you advocate drilling in the OCS. Too bad you wish to claim that the potential is nothing until you have actual numbers from drilling. You are basing our supply upon numbers that are obviously dated. OCS, ANWR change this drastically, and I could not care less if you choose to discount them. The fact remains we will eventually drill in the OCS, and possibly ANWR, and it will change our overall supply significantly. We can set production as high as the area allows. And every day the dems fight against drilling, pushes extraction, refinement, and delivering it to market that much farther away. And you choose that because it fits your view. Convenient, but does not make my argument "disingenuous". Current extraction costs do not justify a $100/barrel cost. There is more than enough margin at a $60 extraction cost to record profit for oil, just not the huge profit they are making now. Kid yourself if you want, but the argument does not hold water while oil is selling at $100+.
I think I've been convinced by the idea that it will benefit the nation in many ways, not just the cost of gas at the pumps. So you are saying oil companies are going to take a $50/barrel cut in profit? I doubt that without subsidies from government.
Do you suggest that when we run out of other sources that they will suddenly quit and go to work at Starbucks? Less profit is still profit, no? When shale is the only game in town, they most certainly will take it.
Doesn't govt determine everything in our lives? Even as the dems bend to the will of the voters, govt regulations will still delay everything for years, so who knows the real answer to that. It's depressing how cumbersome we are.
They are both valid estimates. The invalidity of your numbers was in using a figure for the entire arctic circle instead of what the US owns in the ANWR. But they are both unproven estimates until drilled. You keep confusing estimates with proven reserves and I see no need to keep explaining it. You either understand or you don't.
I challenge you to document this absurd claim. Your grasp of the economics here is poor. The price of oil, as you yourself have already pointed out, is about supply and demand, not about what it costs to produce the oil. What should be obvious is that nobody is going to produce oil at $60 when the competition can produce it for $15 because there will be no market for it. In 100 years when it costs $60 to pump the remaining dwindling oil reserves, then oil shale might be a viable economic source of oil . . . IF the major environmental hassles can be overcome.
And you continue to act as if the oil doesn't exist because someone can't pour it over your head....yet. You either understand it or you don't. I pointed out in another post that when more easily recoverable oil is exhausted, this resource will be used. It is also likely that between now and then, recovery will be more efficient and affordable. Newer technologies evolve each day, unlike your arguments. You didn't bother to read that post, so your point here is absolutely meaningless.
You're starting to get it. Estimated oil is imaginary until you've actually tapped it. In fact, recovery of such hard-to-recover oil is quite expensive and will happen down the road only because the price may go through the roof and make if economically feasible to get to it. Even then . . . it is a fact that most of the oil we know about is in rock with sufficient porosity to contain oil but insufficient permeabiity to allow it to pool and be extracted from the rock.
