Was having a ‘discussion’ tonight with a friend and the subject came up that (according to my friend) the US COULD be oil independent if we simply exploited all the known reserves (offshore, ANWAR, etc…but not the shale oils). I basically said that this was bullshit…even if we could magically get all the oil to market tomorrow we don’t have the (known) reserves to last more than a few years.
Was I right? How much oil is there in the known reserves (I realize this is going to be an estimate…but should be a pretty good ball park figure)? How does this compare to our known rate of use today?
*I am not an oil expert and have only reached these numbers through googling. I’m sure there are plenty of debatable points in my results. Definition of “proved reserve” can be found here and here.