Die, Stupid Drilling Advocates! Die!

It seems the oil drilling, SUV loving, die hard petrol heads have a few allies out on the net. Time's Curious Capitalist is wasting pixels trying to justify drilling here and here. Elsewhere the revered Robert Samuelson starts his post Leaning from the Oil Shock with a plea for, you guessed it, more drilling.

Sigh.

It's especially vexing because as I pointed out in my last post the biggest arguments against expanded drilling are ECONOMIC ones. Now I don't claim to have the credentials of Mr. Samuelson or Mr. Curious, but I do how to work a calculator and if just take the a look at the current numbers here, here and here they don't add up to more drilling. To sum up our proven reserves were at 20 billion barrels back in 2003 and our oil production at 8 million barrels a day. Now imagine if a business was a leader in sales, number three to be exact, but its expenditures were a 150% of those sales. What market analyst in his right mind would say "Well the first thing you need to do is get more sales?"

Curious capitalist? Call me a perplexed capitalist.

And neither of these esteemed gentlemen address the rather pressing issue of the current size of our proven reserves. We were at 20 billion barrels in 2003. Since then we've been draining those reserves at a rate of between 1.5 and nearly 3 billion barrels a year. (8 or 5 million times 365. I wasn't joking about that calculator bit) That means our current proven reserves could be anywhere from 12 to 6 billion barrels left. As both Samuelson and Curious point out, it could take five years or more to fully tap the offshore or Alaskan oil fields. Just in time for the last of the current crop to run completely dry. Meaning we'll have done nothing to ease anyone's burden at the pump or anywhere else.

And what exactly constitutes a "truly significant oil reserve?" Especially when you're gorging yourself to the tune of 7.3 billion barrels a year (20 million times 365). You'd need a 70 billion barrel deposit just to carry you through the next decade. Even W. says there's only 18 billion barrels offshore to be recovered. That's not even 3 years.

And these gentlemen seem to forget the basic economic principal. Namely that a barrel saved through conservation or alternative fuel counts the same as a barrel produced. If we were to cut 10% off our consumption, that's the equivalent of pumping another 2 million barrels a day only this way we're not counting the days until we run out.

No the real economics are screaming one thing and one thing only. Slash your consumption. Trim down. Get in market shape. At least that's what I think they say. But then again what do I know. I'm just a full metal dental instrument.

BMTB