I generally try to ignore Neil Reynold’s misinformation about the world oil situation, but his last column was too much (Big Oil firms aren’t the bandits here – May 16.) His claim that U.S. has “decades” of oil, if only they could drill offshore, is plain wrong. Taking his numbers (which seem to include total on-shore plus offshore oil) of 30 billion barrels proved and 112 billion barrels unproved, for a total of 142 billion barrels, the U.S. uses 20.7 million barrels per day or 7.6 billion barrels per year. My calculator says that is 18.7 years. Of course this ignores all the practical problems of ramping up production to deliver that oil on a daily basis. As to the EIA saying “proven reserves of oil will last 50 years”, well the EIA is the organization that 15 months ago forecast a drop in oil prices to $64 per barrel for 2008. The EIA is the organization that predicts by 2070 there will be more oil flowing daily from Alberta’s oil sands than the whole world currently consumes each day. The EIA is good at recording past history, but very bad at predictions.
