| | Obama keeps repeating this one. He has been saying it since 2010 (if not before then). The intent of the quote is obvious -- it is to mislead the public. It is to make it appear as if we use 12 times more oil than we have. Obama never clears this up, because he is not interested in clarity -- he is an opportunist who manufactures confusion (at the expense of clarity) for the benefit of himself and his cronies. As David Limbaugh points out:
According to the Institute for Energy Research, we have more than 1.4 trillion barrels of oil that is technically recoverable in the United States with existing technology. The largest deposits are located offshore, in portions of Alaska and in shale deposits in the Rocky Mountain states. So the United States has more recoverable oil than the rest of the non-North American world combined. The Heritage Foundation says this is enough to fuel every passenger car in the nation for 430 years. ...
When you add in recoverable resources from Canada and Mexico, the total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels. "To put this in context, Saudi Arabia has about 260 billion barrels of oil in proved reserves." ...
The institute tells us that in 1980, for example, the United States had 30 billion barrels of oil in reserves. But over the next 30 years -- through 2010 -- we produced 77 billion barrels. Now, how can it be that we produced almost 2 1/2 times more oil than we had available, consumed a great deal and still ended up with plenty left over? ...
Obama's formulation conflates two different measures. True, we might have only between 2 and 3 percent of the world's recoverable reserves -- as narrowly and misleadingly defined -- but we don't consume 25 percent of the world's oil reserves, which is what Obama wants you to believe. We consume closer to 22 percent -- but it's not of reserves; it's of the world's oil production. ...
Admittedly, we don't produce 22 percent of the world's total oil output; it's more like 6 to 10 percent.
So, we consume 22% of the produced oil in the world; not 22-25% of the world's oil reserves. And we produce 6-10% of the world's produced oil, not 2%. We currently use 2.2-3.7 times more oil than we currently produce -- but, with technology currently available (even if not utilized), we have more recoverable oil than even Saudi Arabia.
We're not using 12 times more oil than we have.
Ed
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We consume about 25 percent of the world’s oil. We only have 2 percent of the reserves.
