Jul 23 2008
90 Billion Barrels of Oil in Arctic, 30 Billion in Alaska, says USGS
The United States Geological Survey announced today the Arctic may hold 90 billion barrels of oil- enough to supply U.S. demand for 12 years. One-third of that supply is in the Alaskan territory, according to the USGS. The 90 billion barrels of oil expected to be in the Arctic could meet current world oil demand of 86.4 million barrels a day for almost three years.
This is good and bad news. The good news is the more oil we have, the lower the cost will be. Its simple supply and demand. The bad news is current U.S. law doesn’t allow us to go after this oil, and Democratic leaders in both houses of Congress have rejected any attempt to either drill in Alaska, or off-shore.
Furthermore, this find accounts for 30% of the world’s undiscovered natural gas- which Avista says is getting more expensive because of higher demand. But again, we are not allowed to go after it.
While oil isn’t the long-term solution, it is certainly the short term solution to lower prices. Hopefully Congress will open its eyes and see that.
What do you think?
(6 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
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I know for a fact that we sell 40 % of our oil from Alaska to Asia. We need it here in the USA.
Thanks to the GOOD old boys in Washington DC we are where we are today, if they would have allowed more refineries to be built and not allowed our oil to be sold else where ,and of done something about our dependents of forein oil we probably wouldnt be in this situation. If the so called conserned Presedent of the U S would release the billons of oil we have in reserve that would give almost instant relief at the pump , but again thoses GOOD OLD BOYS IN washington D C and our SO CALLED CONCERNED presedent wont do nothing to help!!! THANKS TO THE GOOD OLD BOYS!!
Drilling more holes in Alaska isn’t going to drop the price of oil - especially since its illegal to export Alaskan oil and the West Coast refineries are running at full capacity. In otherwords, where is this new oil going to be refined unless new refineries are opened on the West Coast? And you know darn well the NIMBYs in the Puget Sound area, California and Oregon won’t allow it to happen.
Strengthening the US economy and the value of the US dollar on the world market will help the price of crude to drop.
The price of a barrel of oil in currencies other than the US dollar (i.e. Euro, Pound Sterling or Yen) is around typical average prices. Its only when you look at oil in US dollars is the price per barrel at historical levels.
Delores (and Chris) - from 1973 up until 1995, it was illegal to export crude North Slope oil to foreign refineries under the law that allowed the construction of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline.
The legislation that allowed export of North Slope oil was was rescinded by Congress in 2000 due to public backlash. Alaskan oil is now refined either in California or here in Washington State. Its not sent to Asia or anywhere overseas and when it was, only 7% was ever was exported.
Amanda, drilling WILL reduce the cost of oil. Its simple supply and demand. If you flood the market with something, it will reduce the cost. Even Speaker Pelosi says more oil on the market would decrease the price at the pump. That’s why she’s calling for oil to be released from the strategic reserve. If we have the oil, we should go after it. Its embarrassing to go beg the Saudis or other countries to drill more, when we are not willing to do the same thing.
We don’t need to drill more oil wells, we have hundreds maybe thousands that have been capped. Our family has five wells in Wyoming that as soon as they started pumping were capped by Haliburton/Schlumberger. The reports said they thought they had hit the Mother Vein. So why were they capped? There are alot of wells all over the United States that are capped.
There are refineries in Wyoming and Montana, they aren’t all on the West Coast.