On Drilling Now

Prosperity lies in the huge oil and gas deposits below our shining seas and boundless lands

By Online
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Mark J. Perry

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. relies on foreign oil for nearly 65 percent of the oil we use — and the level of imports is rising. Energy independence, it is not.

Americans spend $400,000 every minute for imported oil. The cost of importing more than eight-million barrels of oil a day becomes even greater when we consider the military cost of protecting oil transported by tanker from the Middle East and other volatile regions.

Nonetheless, the demand for oil is projected to grow as the U.S. now emerges from recession. The government projects that even accounting for gains in efficiency and an increase in the use of alternative fuels, the U.S. will require two-million more barrels of oil per day in 2030, and one trillion cubic feet more natural gas every year.

For an economy that depends on energy reliability and wants greater energy independence, there’s only one realistic solution: adopting government policies to boost production of America’s oil and natural gas resources.

The government should allow oil and natural gas production on federal lands and offshore areas that have been off-limits, or where energy development is constrained by restrictive permitting.

These areas stretch from the Rocky Mountains and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific. Combined, these areas contain an estimated 102-billion barrels of oil and 635-trillion cubic feet of natural gas that could be recovered with today’s technology — more than the proven energy reserves of most OPEC countries.

The history of energy development in the U.S. shows that once actual production begins, new discoveries are made and estimates of recoverable oil and gas rise. Case in point: companies conducting tests 175 miles off the coast of Louisiana, 30,000 feet below the surface, came up with potentially the largest American oil discovery in a generation. Experts say there could be as much as 15 billion barrels, doubling U.S. oil reserves.

Recently, drilling began from far off the Gulf coast, drawing oil from a wellhead nearly two miles below the water’s surface, the deepest in the world. Remote-operated vehicles controlled by technicians at the surface do everything from welding to connecting pipelines in thousands of feet of water.

Credit goes to American innovation and technology. Despite some “peak oilâ€