Good News: We Won't Run Out of Oil

There's a lot of demogoging surrounding the great gulf oil leak.  Listening to some of the recent speeches, one might conclude that we're about to run out of oil.  Hardly.

In a year old article, Jim Ostroff with the Kiplinger Letter identified America's untapped oil bounty.  He wrote:

The U.S. is sitting on the world's largest, untapped oil reserves -- reservoirs which energy experts know exist, but which have not yet been tapped and may not be attainable with current technology. In fact, such untapped reserves are estimated at about 2.3 trillion barrels, nearly three times more than the reserves held by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) nations and sufficient to meet 300 years of demand -- at today's levels -- for auto, truck, aircraft, heating and industrial fuel, without importing a single barrel of oil.

So why not "drill, baby, drill?"  Ostroff says, "Those untapped reserves are located in places that either Uncle Sam has put off-limits for environmental reasons or are too costly to get -- or a combination of both."

And since this article was written, we've made even more finds. 

Rather than flog the oil industry over an accident, we would be better served to promote oil extraction R&D and free up land and close-in coastal areas for safe extraction.  Economically, this could lead to a boom.  Our trade deficit would close.  We wouldn't need to sell debt to foreign powers who are hardly our friends.  The geopolitical importance of the Middle East would lessen.

Our current energy and economic policies are the definition of insanity.

Click to read the Kiplinger article in full.