U.S. Oil Production Today Same as in 1948 46 comments
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According to data from the Energy Information Adminstration for crude oil field production in the U.S., our current annual domestic production of about 1.873 billion barrels of crude oil (5.132 million barrels per day) is about exactly the same as oil production 60 years ago, back in the 1947-1949 period (see graph above). Real GDP today is about 7.2x higher than it was in 1948, and yet we're producing the same amount of domestic oil.
Bottom Line: Don't blame the speculators for high oil prices, blame restrictions on domestic oil production. Let's drill, drill, drill.
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This article has 46 comments:
> jack
So now we need to up our production of domestic oil, DRILL< Yes but not for lower gas prices but for the big picture less dependency on imported oil. Lower gas price pressure is the excuse to galvinize the support to get the tree huggers out of the way and create a bogus national emegnency to jack up congress to blow the lobbyists and let' um drill drill drill.
So are we really the smart ones after all. We went to every country in the world drilled and pumped them almost dry. If we are to believe the world shortage Theory. Sort of like golbal warming, So now we come back home and tap our vast reserves and live happy on our own.
Great you want to drill pass down some relief at the pump.. You still have plenty of money to drill.
And Jack take a look at world war II industrial ramp up and production of equipment. We can get and build and train and have anything we put our collective minds to. The chinese are not the only ones who can build stuff. You just have to make it worth while for americans to get off thier toucas and go to it. We have an estmated 11,000,000 man imported work force looking for jobs; Why not the awl bidness!!!!
I said "B-S!" to the conventional logic then, the reason being America was an oil pincushion... already stuck with an absurdly high number of "pins'. Compared to the rest of the world the USA was "drilled out".
The best hope we had then was to radically improve our electric grid, add large capacity to the US nuclear power stations (including building new facilities) and working like crazy to conserve... I was part of the "Detroit project" when we doubled car mpg from 13 to 27 in less than 7 years... and the US should have instituted oil price controls, upper and lower... tax floor and subsidy top... with small escalation built in, but every dollar put in an oil trust fund like the SPR... would have been cheap insurance and stabilised behavior.
Instead what did the USA do? Revel in an oil crash, then build an absurd SUV fleet, and throw up McMansions on no money down that suck up 10 megawatt-hours per month...
Oh yeah... they voted for sunshine lies and resource wars too... Reagan twice, Bush I, two Clinton terms, Bush II twice... and passed up on Perot when they had the chance.
So what do our children inherit?
Neocon wars (and the neo's are in both parties)... Bank and real estate crises... Auto companies going under... Hubbert's Peak proven... future disasters by the score... food, water, and power shortages on the way.
Get ready folks. And the next time Larry Krudlow or some wannabe bozo spouts about "drill, drill, drill"... drill 'em. Right in the chops.
> jack
> jack
Well anyway let's drill some more, maybe these will produce forever, and alternatives will just become a bad dream.
A short term cushioning is OK but it should take second billing to an alternative more permanent fix, electric, bio diesel etc.
If the ratio now in cars/ per-barrel produced was the same as 1948 we'd all jump for joy. Don't make too much of coincidental numbers.
-US population ~146 million v. 310m now (see how different your graph is done in per capita terms)
-Zero oil imports v. two-thirds now
-Oil industry private industry dominated (except Mexico)
-US the "Saudi Arabia" of crude, no other country produced even half what we did
-US production lite sweet crude all extracted on land in temperate climates v. most now off-shore and polar
-World production had only started its upward climb v. now more or less at peak - - so what whether it's now or 2011 or 2015 (unless you've stopped buying green bananas)
I'm stopping now, but I'm nowhere near done . . .
The comparison between domestic oil production in 1950 and today is a good one because it depicts the effect the illogical, brain dead, socialistic, anti-industry, academic styled economic theories and Congress' involvement manipulating domestic oil prices by importing steadily rising amounts of cheap foreign oil from 1.0 MMBPD in 1958 to 6.0MMBPD in 1973.
Not to be undone by disastrous results of their 1958-1973 cheap oil price policy which created OPEC in 1960, resulted in nationalization of Middle East oil fields, almost destroyed the domestic oil industry's infrastructure and saw the oil price controlled by Saudi Arabia grow to $34/B in 1981, petroleum economists of U.S. and British based academia determined in 1985 the oil price needed to support the Group of Seven's "One World Economy" plan conceived to control rising inflation rates in the industrial nations to be $15/B. And so, between 1986 and 2001 by building "strategic oil supplies" and distorting oil supply figures, the Group of Seven were able to hold world oil prices at an average $15/B.
What the 1958-1973 $3/B average oil price didn't do to completely destroy the domestic oil industry's infrastructure, the 1986-2001$15/B average oil price not only destroyed the domestic oil industry infrastructure, it practically destroyed the international oil industry's infrastructure to the extent the major problem to restoring domestic oil production and increasing international oil production is a shortage of skilled men, materials and modern equipment. A problem Russia, China and India are rushing to solve by educating the large numbers of engineers and geologists who should be in position within the next five to ten years to restore the international oil industry to normalcy, hopefully, without further interference from brain-dead academics who for the past fifty years haven't yet figured out that building and maintaining a strong economic environment requires a steady supply of energy rather than a university full of tenured professors with a grudge against the private sector that won't hire them who resort to consulting with politicians in ways designed to undermine the capitalistic spirit.
(Or maybe they secretly control the futures markets. Hmm, hadn't thought of that. We'd better empanel several new committees of Democrats to investigate. Or perhaps we can wait on the one now busy impeaching the president.)
However, if they fail in their attempt to buck the Democrat Congress, whose antics are responsible for record high oil prices, they're all going retire to some South Sea island paradise with the big oil CEO's. Okay, that sounds better.
But I'm sorry I missed the guy on Hannity. It's true about the caribou, the pipeline keeps them from freezing to death! I'm familiar with the oil seepage issue (2/3 of all oil enters the water that way, and most of the rest comes from boats). But I didn't know about oil naturally washing up on the CA coast.
That's exactly right. It's also the VERY last thing you will ever hear them say, because it would get most of them quickly un-elected.
It is a very difficult issue to openly discuss, actually. Almost like the "third rail" of Social Security. Europeans encourage conservation through HIGH levels of gasoline taxation, but that wouldn't work here due to our anti-tax nature and inherent suspicion of government.
That presents the D's with something of a "Catch 22," if you will. Reasonable people just don't BELIEVE their excuses that the oil companies and auto manufacturers are somehow to blame for America's economic decline. Hell, the internal combustion engine BUILT THE PLACE, so they implicitly know better!
This forces the D's to lie, then. About the closest any of them have ever come to saying so was Obama, when he intoned that gas prices weren't too high, only that they'd risen too fast, earlier this year. (And it's safe to say we won't be hearing THAT again as we approach Nov. 4.)
The R's take just the opposite tact, as they have more faith in free markets. ("The LOWEST COST energy solution will win every time," as Boone Pickens puts it.) They also sense the public popularity of this issue, and are badly need a boost in the polls right now.
But don't bet your house that the D's will be able to hold off the R's here. Owing to the peculiar nature of the OCS moratorium, it must be RENEWED by Oct. 1 EACH YEAR. And the only viable way for the D's to extend it is to make it part of a Continuing Budget Resolution they must adopt before they go home to campaign.
But they don't have the 60 votes they need in the Senate to do this. At the same time, however, it would require the R's to SHUT DOWN the entire federal government to keep the moratorium from being extended. My bet is they will, because when you, "Don't have nothin', you ain't got nothin' to lose."
So what has already been an historic election year promises to get A LOT MORE EXCITING before it's over! I can't wait to see it, myself.
As I think about it, I believe more and more that McCain needs to put Romney on the ticket with him. His positive economic message will resonate well in the industrial Midwest (including PA), where the election will be decided.