Energy Fact of the Week: The Shale Whale
15th May 2012
One of the most tired talking points of the “hydrocarbon deniers” (as I am going to call them) is that the U.S. must move beyond oil because we have less than 2 percent of the world’s proved reserves, though we consume about 20 percent of global oil production. After last week’s testimony from Anu Mittal, the director of natural resources and environment for the Government Accountability Office, to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, anyone who persists in using this talking point again (that would include the president) deserves to be labeled an anti-science ignoramus.
Mittal reviewed the geological survey data of oil shale in the western United States that show we have about 3 trillion barrels of oil equivalent. This represents about two-thirds or more of the total shale oil estimated to exist worldwide. About half of it, according to Mittal’s testimony, is thought by public and private analysts to be recoverable. With droll understatement, Mittal offered the following conclusion, which should be read slowly: “This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.”
Not that the bureaucrats and enviro-nazis will ever let us do anything about it.