America Has More Recoverable Fossil Fuel Resources Than Any Other Country
Doug Brady, Conservatives4Palin
Yes, despite the conventional wisdom being peddled by the inept Obama Administration, you read the headline correctly. Via Peter C. Glover at the Energy Tribune:
In case anyone missed it, let me repeat something that is of a magnitude of 10 on the scale of news-quakes for Joe Public USA: America’s combined energy resources are, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CSR), the largest on earth. They eclipse Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th) and Canada (6th) combined – and that’s without including America’s shale oil deposits and, in the future, the potentially astronomic impact of methane hydrates.
Glover provides this helpful chart to illustrate his point:
Glover first debunks the liberal myth that America has no oil:
While the US is often depicted as having only a tiny minority of the world’s oil reserves at around 28 billion barrels (based on the somewhat misleading figure of ‘proven reserves’) according to the CRS in reality it has around 163 billion barrels. As Inhofe’s EPW press release comments, “That’s enough oil to maintain America’s current rates of production and replace imports from the Persian Gulf for more than 50 years”.
Of course to utilize our vast oil reserves, we have to actually drill for it. But alas, our president is determined to lock up those resources for the foreseeable future, a point Governor made in a recent Facebook Note. If anything, Obama prefers that America increase its reliance on foreign oil. Glover continues his piece discussing America’s enormous coal reserves:
Next up, there’s coal. The CRS report reveals America’s reserves of coal are unsurpassed, accounting for over 28 percent of the world’s coal. Much of it is high quality too. The CRS estimates US recoverable coal reserves at around 262 billion tons (not including further massive, difficult to access, Alaskan reserves). Given the US consumes around 1.2 billion tons a year, that’s a couple of centuries of coal use, at least.
We have the largest coal reserves in the world, and those reserves will last at least 200 years (probably much longer), and Obama has publicly stated he wants to “bankrupt” anyone who wants to build coal plants. Think about that. Glover next discusses natural gas which, when combined with its cousin, methane hydrates, is likely America’s most abundant energy resource:
Yes – Mr. Sternlight – what you say is correct. And Sun Tzu is one person to whom people – especially we Jews – should pay more attention; he and Miyamoto Musashi, as I have often tried to explain in this forum.
Problem solving is a necessary part of any scholastic learning experience, but even more so is problem solving in the field, which is called, of course, “experience”. One could call this a higher form of experiential learning, but it entails constantly making “mistakes” (and learning from them). In other words, risk-taking. This is something I have applied in both the technical and artistic domains all my life, so I’m not talking from a theoretical standpoint.
I work with many Chinese folks, and I find all of them extremely pleasant to work with. They are all – as far as I can see – endowed with a very high level of technical expertise, but I do find a kind of “flatness” when it comes to being “technically proactive” – in other words “creative”. Of course this type of proactivity implies taking the risk of going beyond the bonds of established technical rules, and I’m not sure that those brought up in a highly practical culture are very willing to take such risks. On the other hand, we Jews have been subjected to risk virtually every day for the past 2000 years, and this could be why we are more than willing to “take the chance”. Nothing to lose.
Learning theory is not creative unless it’s taught by problem-solving as it is at MIT and the Harvard Business School. Doing the analysis, design and engineering to produce working military-grade nukes, and ICBMs also requires extreme creativity in execution.
Perhaps you are being misled by Apple’s “Designed in the US, Made in China” strategy, I have seen many highly creative and original Chinese inventions each year at CES, that Americans have not come close to,
No one doubts the Chinese are good at copying. And the phrase “Chinese Copy” is legendary. But ever since Ed Deming taught various Asian countries quality assurance, it no longer carries a connotation of inferiority,
And don’t sell them short on creative problem solving. This goes well back in history, To take an admittedly trivial example, they solved one of man’s oldest problems with the famous “Chinese Back Scratcher”.
As Sun Tzu warned many years ago, it’s a mistake to underestimate a potential adversary, and it can lead to defeat.
Sternlight:
Nuclear and ICBM technology are not radically new technologies, which is why they are being taught openly in places such as Harvard. What part of intellectual vs highly creative thinking don’t you understand?
“Please don’t confuse intellectual expertise with the ability to see well past what has been learned from books – even Harvard-based books.”
What part of the Chinese nuclear weapons and ICBM program don’t you understand? The father of the Chinese aerospace program graduated from MIT’s Aeronautical Engineering department and then went home to build a massive and successful effort with Chinese brains, not books.
Natural gas might show more promise.
A scientist during the Carter administration had estimated the U.S. had enough natural gas to last four thousand years.
Please don’t confuse intellectual expertise with the ability to see well past what has been learned from books – even Harvard-based books. I will remain sceptical about “innovative Chinese products” until I am assured that none of these have been based on (ie: stolen from) some poor Western sucker’s original work and/or patents.
Yamit…
I guess the “major powers” figure that with Israel being such a tiny country, they can just walk in and take the oil and gas.
China… Hmmm… Imagine if China were to have “major problems”. We in the West would have trouble manufacturing even safety pins, because not only have we lost jobs to the Chinese, we have lost both the technical expertise and the infrastructure that is essential for effective and efficient manufacturing. This should scare people much more than it apparently does, because the amount of intellectual and physical investment required to restore basic manufacturing to a reasonable level is substantial, and where intellectual investment is concerned it takes time – a great deal of time.
Mr. Sternlight,
Depending on the whims of politicians, of course, the “draining of America first” would not be much of an issue… if America were to regain, in tandem with the use of its own oil (which will take substantial time starting from this moment on), its manufacturing, as I indicated above, and hence its exporting, prowess. The OPEC cartel’s apparent motives are to sell as much oil as possible in as little time as possible, so that the folks “on top” can make a substantial killing while they are still breathing. If a different (read: sensible) approach is taken, then the use of locally-derived oil (and other “naturally occuring” energy) simply as a means of being independent from OPEC, will fall under that category: “energy independence”. Thus energy used/managed in this manner will not be the means of sustaining a kleptocracy.
Yamit, China ain’t what it used to be and it’s not going back there, either.
yamit82: Don’t sell the Chinese short. They send their best and brightest to non-Confucian places like MIT, the Harvard Business School, and Cal Tech, and they then come home and apply what they have learned.
Consider the Chinese aerospace, missile and nuclear weapons programs for starters. Or visit the Consumer Electronics Show each year in Las Vegas and observe the many original and innovative products from China. Consider that the largest retailer in the world, the US-based Wal-Mart, sells mostly Chinese origin goods.
The reason we import oil into the US is that many believe “drain America first” would be a bad policy, leaving the US far more vulnerable long-term than current policy. If OPEC wants to drain their countries now, that’s just fine, As Mexico has shown, many oil producers are profligate with their revenues and will soon have little oil revenue and concomitant influence if, as many now think, much OPEC oil production has peaked and is in decline. Even the Arab oil producers are vulnerable; as prices rise volume sold decreases and conservation takes place. And much conservation is one-way; we don’t replace efficient uses of energy with inefficient ones just because the price may go back down. Once you build something efficient it’s there for good,
Same for Israel. Much better to keep the oil for later than to sell it to others, Israel should become self-sufficient, but not seek to reduce its long-term energy security by exporting oil or gas. Instead, the oil and gas should be used to produce higher value exports. The highest value exports from oil directly are petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. And energy is an input to much other high export value production.
Meanwhile it’s a stalling game to seem to be sympathetic to the Arab “cause” while actually doing little. It’s mostly atmospherics.
(Note: this writer is the former Chief Economist of a major US-based international oil company,)
Bland re Your new home China!: China cannot rise much because the Confucian culture lacks creativity, and only emphasizes diligent work. China won’t develop into a superpower for two reasons: its non-creative Confucian culture and its huge population, which prevents the upward pressure on wages that would necessitate technological advancement. China, however, has already accumulated a huge financial surplus, and its totalitarian government daily squeezes more from its citizens without distributing much of the funds. China, therefore, makes a good friend for a country like Israel. The Chinese, however, are highly pragmatic, and would side with Muslim regimes against Israel, especially since that doesn’t preclude Israel from supplying China with military technologies.
It makes sense for Israel to shift her foreign focus to India despite the American and Chinese objections.
China is an earthen-legs colossus. Government is strong financially because it regulates economy, suppresses wages, profits from few artificially competitive state enterprises, overtaxes—and does not redistribute. Chinese GDP is modest compared to developed economies, and its growth rate, high because the economy started from zero, would moderate. Large GDP does not mean strong economy; surplus GDP, an excess over the cumulated cost of living, does. Surplus GDP of China is minuscule, and insignificant in per-capita terms. Small rise of living standard’ expectations in rural China would wipe the country’s surplus GDP and budget through redistribution and infrastructure projects. Similar development forced Soviets to increasingly rely on bankrupting import and subsidies of food when the government could no longer leave the people to starve.
Chinese economy is vulnerable to investor flight if wages increase. Indigenous technologies are sparse; investors choose China for low-wage disciplined labor. With several countries nearby having similar culture, pro-business policies, and inexpensive labor, Chinese competitive advantage may prove fleeting.
Confucianism, though promoted work, stifled inquiry and thus limited education. Chinese students have reputation for cramming, not for original thinking. Respect for initiative, inquiry, and dissent—thus education, toleration and liberalism, respect for freedom and property, and rule of law to preserve them—is cornerstone of modern economy. Whether the skills of inquiry are genetic or cultural is not clear; different level of achievements between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews suggests cultural influence. Likely, both factors matter, and nations develop scholarly skills over considerable time spans. China is unlikely to travel the Japanese path of basic goods – copycat – invention anytime soon.
How much of each is recoverable? How much of what is recoverable is economically recoverable? Most of Russia’s resources are in Sibera under frozen earth and ice and far from processing and shipping terminals.
We don’t sell the patents we partner and even build each new plant and then take a percentage of the net. Pollution will kill most Chinese by the year 2030 and those not killed will have their life spans reduced considerably. China has a major water problem aand using any other process but our requires enormous amts. of water and energy. Our process turns heat into steam and water is a byproduct. Done 300 meters under ground means it’s environment friendly.
According to reports I’ve seen, every major oil and gas company wants in to our resources. This I don’t believe has as yet trickled up to World leaders ears and cognizance.
Bland: LEARN TO READ, THEN USE WHAT’S LEFT OF YOUR LITTLE BRAIN TO COGITATE THAT WHAT YOU READ, THEN YOU WOULD NOT HAVE FOUND IT NECESSARY TO ONCE AGAIN MAKE A FOOL OF YOURSELF IN PUBLIC!
Key WORDS REVISED AND UPDATED DATA.
I never said we had more energy potential than America or Russia. We certainly have more than enough to compete with anyone in the ME including the Saudis. If that can’t buy us influence and friends then we still have 300-500 nukes don’t we?
Bland everything is based on reasonably cheap energy and the free flow and easy access to that energy. Everything. Even your New World Order believers must admit that fossil fuels is wealth and wealth drives and motivates all politics and political theories. You cannot gain and maintain power without wealth.
I can see a war or wars with our immediate and less immediate neighbors backed or not backed by the major powers in the world but I don’t see any of those powers attacking Israel directly. They don’t need to when they have well armed and motivated surrogates.
The US and Russia, according to the report, are approximately equal in Total Fossil Fuels (Table 5), with over 900,000,000,000 BOE each, followed by China with about half that amount. Several other countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, have around 300,000,000,000 each. The vast majority of this is in natural gas, rather than oil. In Technically Recoverable Reserves (Table 6), the US and Russia again are front-runners, with Saudi Arabia and China both following with a little under half the reserves of the leaders.
Israel does not even merit mention in this November, 2010 survey, so I don’t know what Yamit’s crowing is based on. All I’ve seen about Israel’s reserves, is that Israel enjoys the prospect of becoming energy independent, with enough left over to export. This is good news, but hardly merits boasting of Energy Super-Power status. As for Israel’s prospects of revenues from patents, I suggest that Yamit go to China to see how much the world’s up-and-coming leaders shell out for patents (namely, not much).
The bottom line of the study is that Israel’s enemies (namely, the nations of the world), have plenty of resources to conduct a military adventure against her; and that their current anti-Israel policies are NOT based on oil and gas availability. (A better explanation, is the philosophical threat that fulfillment of Zionist prophecies poses to the New World Order.) If I were the leader of Israel, I would seriously prepare for the eventuality of such an adventure.
The Oil Shale Fired Power Plant in Mishor Rotem
Oil Shale Deposits in Israel
Tsevi Minster, Geological Survey of Israel, 2008
The first tests (1978-81) were carried out in a 0.1 MW pilot plant, and between 1982 and 1986, the PAMA company established and operated a 1 MW fluidized-bed pilot plant. An advanced R&D program was funded by PAMA and the Israel Ministry of National Infrastructures with an investment of some $30 million, and the ~13 MW demonstration plant was completed in 1989. It has been successfully operated since 1990. The generated energy is sold to the Israeli Electric Corporation, and low-pressure steam is supplied to an adjacent industrial complex. Since 2000, the power station has been operated by the Rotem Amfert group.
The power station is fed by approximately 0.5 million tons of Oil Shale annually, mined at a nearby open-pit mine. A large part of the ash generated in the process is used in products such as cat litter. Most of the ash product is distributed in Europe under the commercial name Alganite.
Israels energy resource potential should change Israels geopolitical status and position vis a vis the rest of the world.
Monday, March 28, 2011 – Adar B 21, 5771
In addition to Israel’s recently discovered natural gas fields, the Jewish state might also possess the third largest reserves of oil shale, a new study finds.
The study, released late last year, shows Israel may hold 250 billion barrels of oil shale, which would trail the reserves only of the United States and China.
What’s more, Israel is developing a unique technology that might be able to extract water while drilling for oil. Especially in recent years, Israel has suffered from acute water shortages.
Oil shale, a sedimentary rock, requires more processing than crude oil, a flammable liquid.
Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Dore Gold says the discovery, if confirmed, could radically shift Israel’s geopolitical reality:
This particular project has global significance. For if Israel develops a unique method for separating oil from shale deep underground, that has none of the negative ecological side-effects of earlier oil shale efforts, that technology can be made available to the whole world, changing the entire global oil market.
The effect of the spread of this technology would be to shift the center of gravity of world oil away from Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf to more stable states that have no history of backing terrorism or radical Islamic causes. (In the Arab world, Jordan and Morocco have the most significant oil shale deposits.)
When will the West begin to treat Israel as a powerful energy giant and not as a weak client state that must be pressured? In the case of the Saudis, when the US realized the true extent of their oil reserves, after America’s reserves in Texas and Oklahoma were depleted by World War II, it sought to upgrade its military and diplomatic ties with the Saudi kingdom even before its production capacity was fully exploited. The US-Saudi connection grew as massive infrastructure investments for moving Saudi oil to Western markets were made, like the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (TAPLINE).
Israels natural Gas!
Who cares about whether America becomes Energy independent. We can sell them all the oil and gas they need:
In any case Israelis hold the patent for the only known process that makes oil shale competitive to crude oil and our process is ecologically friendly.
Funny that the congressional survey you posted de-lists Israel in both shale and natural gas. Hmmm
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Oil shale reserves can turn Israel into major world producer
Read it and Weep as they say!!!
THE JOKE has been told by generations of Jews, most famously Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel: ‘Why did Moses lead us to the one place in the Middle East without oil?’
But an updated version may be required if Harold Vinegar and his colleagues get their way. Dr Vinegar, the former chief scientist of Royal Dutch Shell, is at the centre of an ambitious project to turn Israel into one of the world’s leading oil producers.
Israel Energy Initiatives, where Dr Vinegar is chief scientist, is working on projects to extract oil and natural gas from oil shale from a 238sq km area of the Shfela Basin, to the south and west of Jerusalem.
Oil shale mining is often frowned upon, not least by the environmental lobby, as a dirty process that is both energy and water-intensive. IEI believes that its technique will be cleaner than that of other operators because the oil will be separated from the shale rock up to 300m beneath the ground. Water will be a by-product of the process rather than being consumed by it in large volumes.
According to Dr Vinegar, Israel has the second-biggest oil shale deposits in the world, outside the US: “We estimate that there is the equivalent of 250 billion barrels of oil here. To put that in context, there are proven reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil in Saudi Arabia.”
The marginal cost of production, IEI estimates, will be between $US35 and $US40 per barrel. This, Dr Vinegar points out, is cheaper than the $US60 or so per barrel that it costs to extract crude from inhospitable locations such as the Arctic, and compares with $US30-$US40 per barrel in some of the deepwater oilfields off the coast of Brazil. Read more
America will have to come to Israel for our patents in any event. We could take a cut out of American production like 10%? Just a thought. 🙂