How Much Oil is Out There OCS

by Scotland Willis

If one were to capture the accomplishments of the current Administration over the last year and compared them to previous Administrations, here's what your list might look like(accomplishments); And before you decide that you have no more interest in political discourse, the purpose is not to gloat over President Obama's accomplishments, or even to carry on about politics; no, the numbers are much more interesting than any of that.

So a few quick facts based on data produced by government resources which experts count on and defer to for decision making; but not before we look at the flaw of President Obama's latest interest in off shore drilling. This means that executive and congressional restrictions would be removed that prevent offshore drilling in the outer continental shelf (OCS). Whoa, where did that come from? This is likely a more passive response that what most environmentalists feel would be appropriate.

As the Huffington Post put it "He(president Obama) cited the need for this move to meet short-term economic needs and a longer-term, clean energy future." This is highly questionable, so back to the numbers. According to 2008 figures, the United States consumes about 19.5 million barrels of oil every day. These numbers come from a federal agency, not a environmental watch group. Estimates from the U.S. Department of the interior say that is 0.5-1 billion barrels(Bbbl) of oil in the Mid Atlantic area and 0.03-0.15 billion barrels of oil in the South Atlantic. Stick with me.

At best collectively this represents 1.15 billion barrels of oil. We are almost home. Now if you divide that by the rate of consumption you end up with results that look like this... really complex but hang in there. Total amount of usage this oil will yield by removing these restrictions is...58.97 days. One must agree that this not only qualifies as "short term economic needs", it could easily qualify for extremely short term economic needs. If you are shaking your head in disbelief, there is an open invitation to research these numbers for yourself. I love to be proven wrong, it means that someone else is doing their homework; but then you would also have to train the Energy Information Administration.

It is important to keep in mind that they will also explore natural gas in these same areas; but it is critical not to overlook the obvious as well as the counter productive. Natural gas will yield significantly higher numbers about 11.7 trillion cubic feet( tcf ) about half of what we consume in a year in the U.S. Overall in the United States we consumed 22,227,000,000,000 (twenty-two trillion-two hundred-twenty-seven-billion,) cubic feet of natural gas in 2008. It shows up third behind coal and oil in terms of CO2 (carbon dioxide) output at 5,300 metric tons, but is expected to overtake coal CO2 by 2030.

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