Our Own Oil
July 15, 2008
Great news! Our president lifted the federal ban on new offshore oil drilling. I know the environment is important, and oil spills are nasty and all of that, but gas is just too darn expensive now. We just can't keep paying those greedy Saudi sheiks $145 a barrel for oil. We've got to find our own oil. It's ridiculous how those guys are gouging us. If we can find our own oil here, we can tell those camel jockeys to "shove it", we've got our own oil now! We'll have American companies, with American executives, American rough necks, and even American roust abouts drilling our own oil, and it'll be cheap. Since they're American companies, they'll sell us the oil at a fair price - No more price gouging! It'll be great.
Let's look at a couple facts:
How much oil does the U.S. use? ---> About 20 million barrels/day
How much oil does the U.S. produce?---> About 8.5 million barrels/day
Where do we get the rest? ---> Here's the top five sources of imported oil to the U.S. (source U.S. Dept. of Energy - http://www.doe.gov)
Top Five Sources of Imported Oil to U.S.
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1. Canada : 1.9 million barrels/day
2. Saudi Arabia : 1.5 million barrels/day
3. Mexico : 1.2 million barrels/day
4. Nigeria : 1.1 million barrels/day
5. Venezuela : 1.0 million barrels/day
Gee, do the Canadians charge us $145 a barrel? I thought they were our friends. How about all of that oil we get from Mexico, do we pay $145/barrel for it too? I thought everything from Mexico was cheap! Well, now that I think about it, I wonder how much we pay for the 8.5 million barrels per day that we already produce in the U.S.? You guessed it - $145/barrel.
The price of oil on planet Earth is $145/barrel. It doesn't matter where it comes from or who drilled it. If Exxon drills oil off the coast of California, they'll sell it to us for $145/barrel. The world uses about 85 million barrels per day. Unless something is going to add at least a few million barrels per day to the world oil market, it's going to have an insignificant effect on prices.
I'm sorry to ruin the good mood of the day with all of these facts. It sounded so good this morning when the president described his plan to save us from these high gas prices.
-- Greg