Wednesday, June 18, 2008

800 Billion Barrels of Oil

800 Billion Barrels of Oil

Want to guess where? Not where the turbans are wound too tight. Not in ANWR. Not off the coast. From the Bureau of Land Management's recent press release about oil shale deposits in the American West:
The United States holds significant oil shale resources underlying a total area of 16,000 square miles. This represents the largest known concentration of oil shale in the world and holds an estimated 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil – enough to meet U.S. demand for oil at current levels for 110 years. More than 70 percent of American oil shale is on Federal land, primarily in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.
How much is 800 billion barrels of oil? According to this posting at National Review Online, three times the Saudi proven oil reserves. And unfortunately, the Democrats, according to President Bush, have prevented any of these oil shale deposits on federal lands from being leased.

I'm not expecting the oil shale deposits to make enough of a difference for this summer's vacation. But if we don't get started, we're not going to get there.

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