How long can the US oil reserves last?

Probably a lot more than the US leads its people to believe. In 2004 we were the 3rd most oil productive country in the world, Saudi Arabia being number 1. Many places in the US produce oil, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Texas, Tennesse, and many others. We probably have enough for the US's use for at least a few hundred years. ***How long can the US oil reserves last?
35 YEARSHow long can the US oil reserves last?
depends on how you use them
depends how long you can go without filling your gas tank!
3 answers :


1/ The most important : reserves are of different kind. There are the total oil in place and there are the economic reserves, the strategic reserves etc... The world being what it is, money is the ultimate question. So your question should be : ';How much the US consumer is ready to pay for domestic oil ?';. There are still reserves of coal in UK, France, Germany but it is not any more exploited because it is not economic. When the price of oil will grow, some non-economic reserves, like tar sands for example, will become economic. However, it has a limit. By the way, most of the production of oil of US is used domestically : US is consuming around 21 millions barrels of oil per day and is producing around 7.5 millions. It is exporting only 1 millions of this production.





2/ You need to look at how much the US consumers will take time to adapt to a modern and less consuming style of life. This is another challenge. But with time, the consumation of petroleum products might slightly decrease in the USA, or at least stop to increase.





3/ You need to look at the rate of renewal of the reserves. If a country is producing 7.5 millions barrels per day but is discovering only worth of 6 millions barrels per day, there is a loss of around 500 millions barrels per year which is roughly a big field. This is huge. So you have to look at the famous Hubbert's curve defining the peak oil. After a bit of refining, one should plot the oil production per capita vs time. It peaks around 1980 if I remember well my petroleum economic training. Then there is a decline which can be mathematically calculated using various hypothesis depending on uncertainties.





So, if you look all this and you think the US consumer will change and will be ready to pay 15 $ per gallons for his 4WD car and the oil companies will start to exploit oil shales, you can still expect about 100 years of reserves.
Only after the reserve lost in all oil rich Countries.
there was a study done years ago. which shown our own oil could last at least two hundred years at current rate of use.





better question is, why buy up foreign oil when we have plenty of our own?





by the time we run out, we will probably have an alternative fuel source, which the study did state do to all the changes we always go through.