Self sufficient by 2020 numbers don't add up

[indie9197]

I don't have time to thoroughly research this right now but his numbers seem to be ridiculously off. Obviously, if it was that easy to be self-sufficient we would have already done it.

In addition to the 15 million barrels already produced in the US daily, Romney said his proposals would produce 2 million barrels from off shore drilling, 2 million barrels from "tight" oil production - oil reached through horizontal drilling and "fracking" - 1 million barrels of bio diesel, and another 2 million barrels in natural gas. The extra production, Romney argues, would leave North America completely self-sufficient.

"The net of all this, as you can see, is by 2020, we're able to produce somewhere between 23 and 28 million barrels per day of oil and we won't need to buy any oil from the Middle East or Venezuela or anywhere else that we don't want to," Romney said.


My quick research shows that we produce about 5 or 6 million barrels per day, not 15 million and we consume about 19 million. So trashing the U.S. environment for an extra 7 million "dirty" barrels of oil would still leave us way short of being self sufficient.

I am pretty sure this "plan" can be easily debunked. I think he is a little to smug thinking that all Republicans will go along with this "screw the earth" plan. Plus, no mention of conservation, alternative energy research, etc.

Also, making jokes about sea level rise while a tropical storm is pounding the southern states and causing widespread suffering was the ultimate insult.

[TexasBushwhacker]

1. He's probably counting Canada

as if their oil sands belong to us. Keystone Pipeline or not, they're going to sell their oil to the highest bidder and we have to compete with China and India. Since the feds dropped the ball and legalized fracking when Cheney was VP, states are starting to regulate it themselves. It turns out people don't like having flammable tap water. Who'da thunk?

We import 50% of our petroleum. That's better than it used to be, but our peak production was in 1970. We are way on the down side of the production curve. You can scream "Drill baby drill" at the top of your lungs, but the fact of the matter is that we've already extracted the cheap, easy to get to oil and gas. Oil companies aren't going to drill for it if it's not profitable. They'll just buy it from the Middle East and elsewhere.

Mitt mentioned nuclear as one of the options. Has he ever heard of NIMBY? After the meltdown in Japan, I'm not so sure anyone is going to be too keen on having a reactor nearby.

I also wonder if he's figuring in that our energy demands will go up as our population grows. 2020? No way!

[Major Nikon]

2. He's counting Canada and Mexico

The problem here is that not only are they going to sell to the highest bidder, the prices are going to fluctuate just as much, if not more so. A spike in oil prices because of middle east strife or anything else is going to effect the price of crude from Canada or Mexico just like it will from Saudi Arabia.

Also the only way oil sand production and fracking are feasible at all is if oil prices are high and stay high. So even if you could believe that this wingnut fantasy dreamed up by the oil industry (Rmoney's energy advisor is none other than billionaire oil man Harold Hamm), how can you possibly produce significantly more oil and expect world oil prices to stay high? Surely even Rmoney understands the concept of supply and demand. The only way this can possibly work is if you highly subsidize the oil industry. So even if this fairy tale comes true, the very best you can say about it is it doubles down on oil dependency itself at the expense of alternative forms of energy.

His plan also relies on a lot of unknowns to work heavily in his favor. Nobody knows for sure how much oil is contained on federal lands, and even if we did know we still wouldn't know how fast we can pull it out of the ground. These are two huge unknowns. Also his plan simply turns over the control of oil production on federal lands to the states. So sure Virginia and the Carolinas could develop off shore oil, but would they? What company who is in the business of tourism is going to invest near an area that can be wiped out with one oil leak?

I think even Palin could come up with a better idea than this BS.

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. The US produces 6 million barrels of crude oil and 3.8 million barrels of "oil liquids" a day.

"Oil liquids" are natural gas condensates and ethanol. Ethanol has its own problems. Around 40% of the US corn crop goes to ethanol production; this is not sustainable (see this year's drought). The US imports about ten million barrels of oil a day, mostly from Canada and Mexico, but also from Venezuela, Nigeria, and various other places.

And as far as production increases go...not only do Romney's numbers not add up at all, but he's over-optimistic, see the following on Montana/North Dakota shale oil:

A mountain-top take on the flood: If Montana is a microcosm of the world, one message to glean is that we are not in the midst of a decades-long flood of oil supply in the United States, as many suggest. Instead, the red lights are blinking across the exuberant U.S. oil patch. As you recall, much has been made in recent months about the momentous prospects for U.S. oil and gas, which are said to be leading a global fossil fuel revolution, with meaningful implications for fortune-hunters and geopolitical players alike: North America will be independent of outside oil producers, the U.S. will experience an industrial revolution, and OPEC will drift into laggardly inconsequence. So what to think about the latest news from folks approaching the punch bowl with bad intentions?

Let's start with Montana, and the now-legendary Bakken shale oil formation. Bob Brackett, an analyst with Bernstein Research, studied a dozen years of shale oil drilling data for this mountainous state bordering Canada. What he found was a steep oil production increase through 2006 -- surpassing 100,000 barrels a day -- followed by a fast, 40 percent decline to about 60,000 barrels a day today. The plummet is counterintuitive because the time frame coincides with a capital spending binge by the industry -- tens of billions of dollars poured into the new innovations and technology that have opened up the Bakken and other shale plays. So why has Montana's production dropped? "Resource plays," Brackett writes in a note to clients today, "have limited/finite drilling locations. The best locations get drilled early, the less economic ones later, and once they are drilled, operators move on." In other words, Brackett told me in a followup email, "industry drilled the low hanging fruit first, and now can't find the same quality of opportunity."

But surely this is just Montana, right Bob? You don't mean to suggest that the entire Bakken formation, including North Dakota -- on which so many North American projections centrally rely -- is in trouble, too? Sadly, that is precisely what Brackett means. In fact, he has quantified the Bakken's production trajectory. The key number is six - that is the longevity of a Bakken well before it turns into a "stripper," industry argot for a worn-out nag producing just 10 or 15 barrels a day, from 400 barrels a day at its peak. Right now, just 200 modern Bakken wells are strippers. But in roughly six years, there will be 4,000 of them, Brackett says. "All good things in the oil patch come to an end," Brackett told me. "In the case of North Dakota, that is a long time -- years -- off, but even that too will suffer the same fate" as Montana.

http://oilandglory.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/07/27/the_weekly_wrap_july_27_2012_part_i