Talk:Oil reserves in the United States

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 12 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kphelps1991.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:36, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Moved from Oil reserves
Should this be added to the US section? http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/pure_products_of_america/who_says_theres_4.php   —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.91.235.10 (talk) 01:42, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Why dos this article claim 2 1/2 terabarrels of shale in US and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_reserves claim that's more than 100 times the entire planet's reserves?


 * Nope. It's just another case of people not taking their medication like their psychiatrists told them to. In reality, the Williston Basin has been rather thoroughly explored and drilling a bunch of new horizontal wells into the old formations, while no doubt profitable at current prices, is not going to keep all those millions of SUVs supplied with cheap gasoline. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 04:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

hey, RockyMtnGuy, have you, or anyone citing estimates, ever heard of the green river formation? i'll not elaborate here, since you can go look for yourself, and in the process educate yourself. it may not change your obviously political, biased stance on this issue, but nevertheless, the facts speak for themselves. and support the massive estimate of potential, and yes economically, recoverable oil in the u.s. and, yes, in a nutshell the green river formation contains more oil than the reserves in the rest of the entire world. surprise.Patric627 (talk) 05:04, 10 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Bakken Formation is already discussed in this article, as a prospective resource. The USGS estimates 3-4.5 bn of prospective resource, NOT reserves. Rich Pollastro, a geologist for the USGS who worked on the Bakken assessment, said, “Our assessment is of ‘undiscovered, technically recoverable resources,’ not economically recoverable resources. It will take tens of thousands of wells with ‘success’ and ‘failure’ to produce the resource we have estimated.”  The "400 billion barrel" estimate is an urban legend, an internet myth.  The myth comes from a 1999 draft report by a now-deceased USGS employee, Leigh Price.  Price was trying to assess the "oil generation potential" of the oil found in the pores of rocks and shale in the Bakken field, as well as the total content of how much oil might be pooling up - or "oil in place.  Price was looking at 'oil generation potential,' and then, from that, trying to make an estimate of 'oil in place'.  --Work permit (talk) 20:10, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Bakken Oil

 * Okay, now that the USGS report has actually been released, can I suggest that people actually READ them before quoting what someone said they might say before anybody actually saw them. And learn to recognize when people are blowing smoke. What the USGS actually SAID, when the actual report was released, was that the Bakken formation may contain between 3.0 and 4.5 billion barrels of undiscovered oil. Not 175 to 500 billion barrels as the speculators said. Big difference - 3.0 to 4.5 billion barrels is only 5 to 7 months consumption for the US at current rates. Bottom line: sell the Hummer, buy a Toyota hybrid. And don't invest in oil stocks unless you know how to read the geological reports for yourself. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 18:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Leave the opinion out of wikipedia, Rocky. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.219.122.113 (talk) 02:58, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I've changed the category of Bakken to prospective resource from unconventional reserve. --Work permit (talk) 03:13, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Latest 2012 estimates now that they found the lower shelf are around 24 Billion. The real question is how much of that can be recovered.

Question about protected drilling areas
It is not clear from the article if the "Proven Reserves" includes the oil under those areas in which drilling has been prohibited (both offshore and on land) for environmental and other reasons. If someone understands this issue, would they please clear this up for us? Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 18:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to say that the U.S. 20 billion barrel reserve does not include development prohibited fields. That's based on this NYT article that reports the EIA as saying "roughly 75 billion barrels of oil in the United States are off-limits for development, and that 21 percent of this oil — or 16 billion barrels — is covered by the offshore moratorium."  RockyMtnGuy would know for sure, and could also qualify these numbers for us (since there's a BIG difference between proven and probable, and 75 billion barrels sounds pretty extreme).  NJGW (talk) 19:39, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * If drilling is prohibited, it should definitely NOT be included in proven reserves. In order to be proven, reserves must be producible using current technology, under current economic conditions, and (and this should probably be added) under current government regulations. The existence of these resources is purely hypothetical, and nobody has enough data to predict the quantity to two significant digits (or even one), so I suspect a political motivation (you-know-who would like to open these areas up for drilling). And then there's my favorite saying about the EIA and the USGS, "They've always been wrong before, so why would you expect them to be right this time?" RockyMtnGuy (talk) 04:34, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This is not answering my question, which is inspired by the national dialogue. My question is "How long would the oil that the US has last if we did not not get any other oil from elsewhere?"  I gather that the 11 or 3 year figure in the article is not accurate because it excludes that oil which has been banned from development for, what may be called, "political" reasons.  OK then, removing all political considerations (a thought experiment), How much oil is there altogether under US territory?  How long would it last? Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 19:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * A better question would be "how fast could we pump it out?" Assuming oil imports stopped tomorrow, we would still only be able to pump out the same amount as we are pumping out today.  Just imagine how much an oil producer would love to be selling twice as many barrels as they are right now.  If the bans are lifted, the new question is how long would it take to develop the new areas... I'm no expert but I keep seeing the experts throw around numbers like 10-20 years before production actually becomes significant (you have to remember the production curve has to ramp up before it peaks), and once the new areas are producing, you have to figure that the old areas will have declined quite a bit, so total production will not be any higher than it is today.


 * BTW, I'm not really sure what you mean by "political considerations". That implies that there are only political reasons at stake, rather than environmental, technical, legal, or economical reasons. NJGW (talk) 19:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Not helpful. This is not an arguement. Just a request for the facts.  How much oil is there, really? How long would it last?Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 19:41, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * The fact is that the U.S. has a little less than 21 billion barrels of oil left. It is hypothesized that there might be another 75 billion barrels which has not been found yet. Note that this is not a fact because it has not been proven to be true, and it's not even a theory because there is no scientific consensus that it is true (many geologists would disagree). How long will it last? Well, hypothetically, the 21 billion barrels known to exist would take 11 years to produce if they could continue to produce it at the same rate as at present (which they cannot). However, the ratio is useful because it does illustrate that oil independence for the U.S. is a lost cause. If they did find something - and that is not a given - by the time they got it on-line (minimum 10 years), the current 21 billion barrels would almost be gone, and the additional oil would only cause a blip in the end of the decline curve. The hypothetical 75 billion barrels would only represent a hypothetical 10 years of consumption. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 20:41, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry you thought I was being unhelpful, but the U.S. now produces 5 million barrels per day (and falling since 1970), but uses 20 million barrels each day (and rising, but maybe it fell a little this year). Therefore, how long domestic production would "last" is kind of laughable as a question (not a reflection on you, but rather on the national dialouge you refer to):  the U.S. will still be pumping oil 20, 30, maybe even 50-100 years from now, but it will never be enough to satisfy domestic consumption unless domestic consumption drops to the levels that are physically producible.  That's the nature of oil production (and of the production of any limited resource: first it's easy to get and production races up, then it gets harder and harder to get and production falls back down... and if nothing is done about an impending supply drop then interesting times ensue).  NJGW (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * So then, all of the talk about "Opening up off-shore oil" is about an insignificant amount of oil, an amount that would not supply the US for any important length of time? Even so then why is it so hard to know just much oil we are talking about, within a margin of uncertainty, of course? I am trying to understand how much oil has been banned from development, for one reason or another, and could be used if the political decision to do so was made, (in the US only) not that oil which has been or is about to be developed and pumped, and which seems to be more clearly understood.  Forget about how long it would last. I understand that question involves even more uncertainties. Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 21:19, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Well, the likelihood of the U.S. ever producing 20 million b/day seems less than slim-to-nil, and as RMG points out, new oil wouldn't be on the market for 10 years anyway... so the discussion is just plain ill-framed. As far as reserve amounts go (and remember that just because it's there, we haven't said how fast it can come), we're talking about the volume of a resource that's 1000's of ft underground, and in the case of off-shore more 1000's of feet under water. Estimates are given in terms of Estimated Ultimate Retrieval (EUR), and are broken down into a 95% confidence interval (so that p95 EUR tells you someone believes there is a 95% chance that this much will be extracted before the well is technically dry, and p5 EUR tells you they say there's a 5% chance for that amount). I can't comment on what exactly goes into these estimates, but I imagine it involves quite a bit of seismic imaging, test drilling (when allowed), and way more guestimation. The fact is we don't know exactly how much oil is in banned areas, and as RMG said above "They [the folks we're quoting for p95 and p5] have always been wrong before, so why would you expect them to be right this time?" The real point is that no matter how much is there, a) it won't make a difference to anyone for at least 10 years, and b) even then it won't be enough per annum to cover consumption anyway (unless we drastically drop our consumption by then, making the problem moot anyway).

By the way, I think we're now getting into territory which would be helpful in the article, namely how reserves are quantified and issues surrounding that. NJGW (talk) 21:57, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * This discussion is a disappointment to me. I had hoped that a simple change to the article would answer the question; a statement something like this (Using fictitious numbers):


 * United States proven oil reserves declined to a little less than 21 billion barrels (3.3×109 m3) in 2006. This includes 6 billion barrels in areas where development has been prohibited by legislation or executive order.


 * I still don't see why such a simple statement is so difficult to make. Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 20:34, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, I hadn't realized that's what you were getting at. My bad if I missed it.  Well, the fact is that reserves don't count banned development areas so you can't say that anyway.  NJGW (talk) 20:40, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * What you could say is: United States proven oil reserves declined to a little less than 21 billion barrels (3.3×109 m3) in 2006. This does not include any reserves in areas where development has been prohibited by legislation or executive order. Which pretty well summarizes it. Discussing what might be in those areas is speculative and has POV problems with U.S. politics. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 20:59, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK then, How much oil IS there in those areas where development has been prohibited by legislation or executive order? That was my original question?  Why leave it vague in the article?  Doesn't somebody, somewhere have some idea of this number?  Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 22:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * If you want the exact answer you'll have to extract it all and then see what you got. Even the EIA won't give an exact number, just the EUR stats. I think it's pretty clear that nobody really knows how much is there, it just seems like extracting it at this point would be too little too late.   NJGW (talk) 23:12, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It is not a matter of the exact number. None of the numbers in the article are exact. A number to the same degree of imprecision as all the other numbers would be close enough.  It is a question of some number, some knowledgeable person's best guess.  This issue has become a part of our national dialogue. "Should we open up off-shore areas for drilling?"  That is one question that the country is considering. How can we answer this, each citizen, each voter for himself, without, at least, having some idea of how much oil we are talking about?  Your opinion, or that of some "Pundit" on TV that there is or is not enough oil to be worth pumping is not the final word on this subject.  I don't believe that my request that this information be put into the Wikipedia article is unreasonable.  If I had any idea of where to look, I would find it myself and put it in.  Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 23:37, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Nevermind. I found answers elsewhere. Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 20:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

(undent)First off let's be clear that you've changed the question as we've gone along, and only recently explained what you wanted to place in the article. Secondly, we've now come full circle to the main problem, which isn't how much oil is in the ground, but how fast we can get to it. There could be zillions of barrels under the ground, but if it takes 20 years of development to reach it it's not going to help us out. Right now we know for a fact that The real question isn't how much oil is underground, what would it take to end oil imports. We won't end it by drilling more oil for at least 10 years (and even after 10 years it doesn't look good... unless we're not using 20 million/day by then). NJGW (talk) 23:48, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) the U.S. will be producing at most 5 million barrels per day for at least 10 years, and
 * 2) today we use 20 million barrels a day so we need to import at least 15 million barrels.


 * Former head of EIA: "Offshore oil drilling is expensive and unlikely to lower oil prices or have a dramatic impact on the world oil market. We shouldn’t rule out some carefully monitored expansion of lands available for exploration and development. But opening up more offshore areas in a country that has been drilling away since 1859 won’t be a game changer in an expanding world oil market... The amount of fuel we consume is so large that subsidies will have unacceptable budget impacts for any fuel that achieves broad usage. The key policy here is making sure the fossil fuels pay their own way for external costs related to national security and the environment." 68.39.252.117 (talk) 19:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think we're being a little loose with terms. The US produces 5m bbls of Crude  Oil/day.  We consume 20.68m bbls of Petroleum Products/day.  The latter figure includes ngl and gas condensate.  If you want to put consumption on equal footing, we (net) import 12m bbls/day of Petroleum Products''.  The EIA  reports our "Dependence on Net Petroleum Imports" as 58.2%  (which is 12/20.68) in 2007.--Work permit (talk) 03:34, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The matching of production and consumption misses a few factors. In addition to the 5 m bbl/d of crude oil there is about 2 m bbl/d of natural gas liquids which are converted into petroleum products. (And there is the obscure refinery gain, which results in the change in density from heavy crude oil to lighter products and amounts to about 1 m bbl/d.) However, the bottom line is that the US imports about 60% of its petroleum and products, and, notwithstanding offshore drilling, that is most likely going to increase rather than decrease in future under any realistic scenario (I wouldn't describe some of the US government projections as "realistic"). RockyMtnGuy (talk) 02:58, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Is there a government whose projections you would describe as "realistic"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.37.222.185 (talk) 21:41, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * A little late, but a good graphical representation of US imports, production, and the effect of offshore drilling on those figures:  NJGW (talk) 19:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Even later, but for what it's worth: "The Interior Department estimates there are 18 billion barrels of recoverable oil beneath the Outer Continental Shelf, about half of it off California." NJGW (talk) 06:25, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Encyclopedic tone
It appears that this article was written from the perspective of a financial and/or other kind of expert about oil. This is not the intended audience of Wikipedia. I am tagging this article to at least have a better lead and better writing, specifically with an encyclopedic tone. (EarnestyEternity (talk) 17:12, 12 March 2011 (UTC))

Aecoleman39 (talk) 16:24, 22 March 2012 (UTC)Andrew39== Ease of understanding ==

It is difficult to foresee all the questions people may pose concerning a topic but there are some I think that are general and take on importance especially in this current time. Also, I consider my intelligence to be above average but technical jargon on things can confuse anyone if they are unfamiliar. So I just wanted to ask a couple very basic questions since we hear political candidates spouting crap all the time. 1) Given the current known and estimated oil reserves in the US that are considered economically viable to tap, how many barrels of oil do we have? 2) Is it economically feasible to build more oil refineries in the US and maintain ecological safeguards currently in place? 3) What is the daily US oil consumption in barrels? 4) Given current trends, what is the forecast for US oil consumption? 5) What is the daily US oil production level right now? 6) what percentage is that of the maximum we can produce today? 7) If all reserves from question #1 were tapped, what would be the maximum daily production levels. 8) If all reserves from question #1 were tapped, could we produce enough oil to meet our own needs and if so how long would it take to deplete those resources and run out of oil? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aecoleman39 (talk • contribs) 16:19, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Reserves vs. Resources
Although the article is titles reserves, much of it treats resources. We should either retitle the article, or eliminate the sections on resources. Plazak (talk) 02:24, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Bad link for the EIA article
I'm not so great at editing Wikipedia, so I'll leave this to someone else's more capable hands, but the (currently) first link, which is supposed to back up the claim that the EIA says the US has 23 billion barrels of conventional oil and 218.9 billion total technically recoverable barrels, doesn't back it up. I found an IER (the next group) article claiming the same numbers, and they linked to an EIA article: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/assumptions/pdf/oil_gas.pdf Unfortunately, that seems to be an updated article, and the numbers it appears to currently give (I'm no expert) are 22.3 billion proven conventional barrels and 220.2 billion technically recoverable barrels.

Make it so.

ObiBinks (talk) 14:06, 6 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Additionally, it appears as if the IER has a new estimate of 1,194 billion for the total number of technically recoverable barrels of oil: http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/?p=15346 (this article is more recent than the one linked to).
 * ObiBinks (talk) 14:14, 6 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Hopefully my last catch, but it seems that the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska numbers are out of date. In 2010, USGS released a significantly lower estimate.  http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2010/3102/
 * ObiBinks (talk) 20:18, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

contradiction between two sections in this article.
in the opening section, it is stated "The Energy Information Administration estimates US undiscovered, technically recoverable oil resources to be an additional 198 billion barrels"

in the section "prospective resources" it is stated "The Energy Information Administration estimates US undiscovered, technically recoverable oil resources to be roughly 134 billion barrels"

why the discrepancy?? please clarifyPatric627 (talk) 05:06, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

WAS OR WERE?
" proven crude oil reserves in the United States was 44.4 billion barrel" - Was or were? 199.127.133.181 (talk) 19:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Jehorn (talk) 22:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)