Quote:
Originally Posted by retclt
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THat looked like another diatribe of factless information thrown out to get a reaction to those who have not researched the facts. My opinion.
However, I back tracked throught the Dept. Of Interior and found the link:
Offshore Minerals Management Home Pge
Check it out for yourself. The key phrase (although there are actually two) is:
1)
'MMS estimates of oil and gas resources in undiscovered fields on the OCS (2006, mean estimates) total 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of gas'.
Now, that does not mean there IS that much, that is how much they guess MIGHT be there in UNDISCOVERED fields. UNDISCOVERED. That is like saying there is 50 billion dollars of Spanish gold coins sitting on the bottom of the ocean if we could just find the armadas. Bottom line, this is not based upon what they know is there, it is them guessing what might be there. Contrast that to ANWR or Bakken where they KNOW It is there and have a reasonable, educated guess on how much.
2) The key is not how much oil reserves are there - the key is (and read carefully as most people leave this out)
HOW MUCH IS RECOVERABLE.
Recoverable!! How much oil reserves are there is really irrelevant if you cannot get it. The recovery rate varies depending on the soil conditions, porosity of the rock, etc. Modern techniques have allowed us to maximize this rate of "absorption" or "recovery". However, we are still very limited to what the soil allows us to pull.
Basically, if you have 100 billion barrels of reserves, but can only pull 1 million out of it due to leeching, how much is the reserve? 100 billion or 1 million? I say 1 million. Now ask yourself who says 100 billion, and why??