LOCATION: R40872
What do you Learn: Since there is so much confusion about the state of the world's oil supply and other energy commodities. Policymakers are at a quandary are we at peak oil? Or is oil a natural process of the Earth? But before we can get to that point we need to have some baseline definitions about how much oil there is available for the 7.1 Billion Barrels of Oil, 23.2 Trillion cubic feet of Natural Gas, and 1.04 billion short tons of Coal that Americans consume each year. This report has that at its objective.
There are two basic terms that one must know to understand quantities of fossil fuel deposits. Proved Reserves and Undiscovered Resources. Proved Resources are deposits that in their discovered form are economically viable for extraction. They are such that they must be reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission are part of a corporation's capital assets. The second type of fossil fuel deposit is the category of undiscovered resources. They are those that are estimated to exist by the United States Geological Survey. There is a third term of "in place resources" but is seldom used because as they interestingly note that very little of a fossil deposit is ever extracted for commercial use. Those terms are important when looking at the newly discovered Bakken Oil formation in the Western US that there was a gap between the "in place oil" and that was economically viable for extraction.
Now how does this relate to current policy debates on Capitol Hill? Take This Press Release by Sen. Jim Inhofe notes when you add both the proved reserves and the recoverable resources one arrives at the figure of 167 billion barrels of oil. However, his opponents only look at the proved reserves figure of 21 billion barrels and claim that that is what this country has in terms of oil deposits. They go on to the specific components of how they arrive at those figure However they throw in this caveat "this is not a simple arithmetic exercise " since the there is fluctuation in the figures but nonetheless averages can be made.
There are two basic terms that one must know to understand quantities of fossil fuel deposits. Proved Reserves and Undiscovered Resources. Proved Resources are deposits that in their discovered form are economically viable for extraction. They are such that they must be reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission are part of a corporation's capital assets. The second type of fossil fuel deposit is the category of undiscovered resources. They are those that are estimated to exist by the United States Geological Survey. There is a third term of "in place resources" but is seldom used because as they interestingly note that very little of a fossil deposit is ever extracted for commercial use. Those terms are important when looking at the newly discovered Bakken Oil formation in the Western US that there was a gap between the "in place oil" and that was economically viable for extraction.
Now how does this relate to current policy debates on Capitol Hill? Take This Press Release by Sen. Jim Inhofe notes when you add both the proved reserves and the recoverable resources one arrives at the figure of 167 billion barrels of oil. However, his opponents only look at the proved reserves figure of 21 billion barrels and claim that that is what this country has in terms of oil deposits. They go on to the specific components of how they arrive at those figure However they throw in this caveat "this is not a simple arithmetic exercise " since the there is fluctuation in the figures but nonetheless averages can be made.
