Is there any way to determine the Military’s Oil consumption?
If so, what was the world’s oil production before the Iraqi oil fields were destroyed?
Next, is there a possible metric to see how much oil would have to be pumped to make up for the oil production that was lost as well as the oil consumed by the military, in order to make the shameless land grab even a good idea from a business perspective?
I can’t imagine that M1A1s, Humvees, F-16s and Predators get the best gas mileage. Not to mention all the naval diesel powered ships.
My gut tells me that we’re never going to recoup the oil that was used in this war. Did anyone even do a cost-benefit analysis on this one?
I think you are severly underestimating the amount of oil in those fields. Just to try to give a perspective, I remember reading that when the wells in Kuwait were set afire during the first Gulf War it destroyed about 5% of the Kuwaiti reserves. These wells were burning for weeks or months and the waste was monumental but it was still a somewhat small percent.
On the other hand, in the past couple of days I read that some of the actions of our military and the rebuilding contractors have inadvertantly destroyed some of the oil fields in Iraq. Sorry I can’t find the link.
Yes, the military uses a lot of oil but the supplies they are going after are quite ample.
A single refueling of an aircraft carrier such as as the USS Kitty Hawk can be more than a million gallons. There should be compilations of these numbers around somewhere. They add up. Big.
I would imagine you would never see a cost-benefit analysis on this one because the war supposedly is not about the oil.
Iraq has around 100 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. There are large areas that haven’t been explored. Also, I think in the middle east they only count the easy barrels to obtain. A high level Saudi oil minister has been quoted as saying something to the effect that with modern drilling techniques their proven reserves could be doubled.
A common figure thrown around is that the United States uses 20 million barrels of oil a day. Multiply that by 365 and that is 7.3 billion barrels of oil a year. So, if we were to take all of Iraq’s oil that is enough to supply all of our needs for roughly 13 years (not factoring growth). Although the U.S. military is huge, commercial usage far exceeds it.
I am with Spartydog here. I think you are underestimating how much oil there is out there (not that I am encouraging wasting it). Also, it isn’t just about Iraq. It is about ensuring stability for the entire region. Iraq and its immediate neighbors hold 4 of the top 5 spots in proven oil reserves.
Right now oil is selling for about $65 a barrel. The CIA World Factbook gives Iraq’s proven oil reserves at 112 billion barrels, thus the gross value of Iraq’s oil is about $7 trillion dollars, far more than the war there has cost, though you have to figure extraction cost into things - anyone know how much it cost to exact oil there?
Well, just the extraction is really cheap in the Middle East. I have heard rumors that it is 2-4 dollars per barrel. (Wikipedia, although I don’t consider it an authorative source confirms this).
I don’t think $2 per barrel is that far of the mark. That might even be too high. I worked for an oil and gas exploration firm a few years back. We were lucky and happy if our extraction costs were as low as $9 per barrel with our fixed costs spread out over many years. But, we need to drill significantly deeper than they do in the Middle East (like 5 times as deep). The production of one of our wells is way less than one in the Middle East. So, our fixed costs would be a higher percentage per barrel. Also, I would be willing to wager our exploration costs, labor costs, and drilling rights costs are more.
So, at $2 a barrel it would not cost much to suck Iraq dry. We also have to figure that the low numbers we are talking about are for the primary and simple methods of extracting oil. Usualy, less than a third of the oil is retrievable in this way (at least here in America).