Could the U.S. Survive Without Foreign Oil?

Could we? I have read reports that we have vast reserves and that fracking will bring us a bounty. We have vast reserves of natural gas as well. What if we could no longer get foreign oil? Would be be able to survive? How dependent are we upon foreign oil reserves?

 

The oil in the ME is technically ours since we found it.

 

With the XL pipeline, a lot longer than without.

 

Don't get your hopes up too high...

... Jeb Bush wants to sell off our oil...

... to other countries.

 

My understanding is that we now have a lot more oil in the US than we used to, however, it is still not enough, particularly if we keep on using more and more. We don't get a whole lot from the ME any more, and get the majority of our imports from Canada, I think

We are still dependent on the vast reserves of Saudi Arabia, in the sense that all the nations of the world are. If the Sauds were to shut off the taps we might last somewhat longer than a lot of the world but eventually we wouldn't be able to get all the oil we needed from the other producing nations either.

 

It was the typical short-sighted conservatives and neoconservatives that have opposed the development of renewable energy since the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970s. Things have not changed in over forty years, just recently the righties were the cheerleaders for "drill, baby, drill."

Years ago, when Dubya screwed up the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me," he was thinking of how often the fat cats fool the right-wingers. The fat cats regularly put them to shame to this day.

 

The answer is yes. BUT, "you" are wetting yourself because "you" can buy oil at half the price from foreign sources. Many of the shale oil sites are currently not operating because of the global oil price fall and the problem with shale oil fields is that if the oil is not extracted straight away once drilled, the oil becomes contaminated and no longer viable. Drilling has to occur every couple of years or so unlike conventional oil fields. This is very expensive. Once a site becomes dormant, it becomes prohibitively expensive to restart drilling new holes.

 

Rubbish, and you know it. You are "technically" completely wrong.

 

You have a strange definition of ownership.

I didn't know that Canada belonged to the US too .


As to the OP topic:

All of the new oil discoveries in the US and Canada are low quality oil, which is hard to extract, and wells run dry quickly. Tar sand oil has an energy return on energy invested (EROI) of less than 3. That's already lower than PV solar. The only reason why people even look at tar sand oil is because of the entrenched infrastructure of fossil-fuel based energy.

Unfortunately, powering all of the US's electricity needs would cost about $5 trillion is upfront investment. With the conservative angst over renewables, it is unlikely that any inroads will be made to installing significant amounts of renewable capacity. Meanwhile, China installs as much PV solar capacity this year alone as the US has in total. So, let's fall further behind in the race to the energy future, by putting our heads in the ground and pretending that oil will last forever.

 

Yes we can survive without it, but why use it all up when we can use theirs then have ours for our future needs.

 

That doesn't make any sense. The Keystone XL pipeline is intended to move CANADIAN oil.

 

We didn't find the oil in Iraq or Iran, or Saudi Arabia.

The British did. By your strange and jingoistic definition, they should be British colonies.

The

 

Your car runs on solar panels?

 

If America is last to adopt a realistic policy regarding renewables it will be the first to suffer the consequences. The fantasy that shale will be America's energy saviour is like giving a comfort blanket to an insecure child-the difference being that children grow up and wise-up. America's touchingly naive and child-like faith in the eternity of cheap oil is vastly misplaced-but the governments and their Big Oil sponsors will continue to feed you their platitudes and you'll continue to live in ignorance.

 

This is like asking if America could live without horse drawn wagons at the turn of the 20th Century.

Americans are some of the most industrious people and of course we could get by just fine without depending upon foreign oil reserves. Yes, we'd need to make some changes but there's nothing really preventing those changes except our dependency today on foreign oil.

 

Cars like the Nissan Leaf could, although a large amount of panels wold be needed to power it. Note, however, that I did not mention cars in my above post, I talked about ELECTRICTY demand. So, how about commenting on my post instead of asking a deflecting question?

 

That's not the correct question. Can an electric car run off of solar generated electricity and for about 99% of our personal transportation needs it could. It really doesn't matter if the solar panels are on your house or if the solar generated electricity is generated elsewhere and delivered to your home via electrical lines. Overwhelmingly most transportation needs are within a few miles from home where the battery (energy) storage is more than enough for our transportation needs. Only long distance commuting requires more energy than can be stored in a battery pack for a car.

 

I fully agree. As I noted above, shale and tar oil have pitiful EROI. They are not going to save the day, and in the current climate of low demand (due to the slow global economy, not because of plentiful supply), you will see the excecs running fast from new plays and their support of the XL pipeline.

 

You did no such thing... nor did the US government.

 

There's a US flag on the Moon, therefore it "technically" belongs to America! At least that's the 'logic' we're supposed to agree with.

 

Low demand? Are you kidding? There is a glut of oil on the market... Supply is more than plentiful and wells are being capped for later.. perhaps decades from now.

The problem for domestic production is that our extraction costs are the highest in the world. If and when the ppb goes to $100, we'll be back in business.

 

What I meant was that if the world economy was humming along at a 6% growth rate, there would be no oil glut.

As to your second point: Look at the energy return on energy invested (EROI) figures I posted above. Low EROI means that oil is hard to extract, and, thus extraction is expensive. When EROI goes below 2 (you need to invest one barrel of oil to extract 2), the energy source becomes marginal. So, yes, I agree that in terms of EROI, US oil is of poor quality and is not going to be our savior.

 

Well, the US has no economies of scale in the oil biz... and something like half US wells produce less than 50 barrels per day.. and, they use old time rocker pumps.

 

Look up Standard Oil.

 

Yes, but it would be better if we used up theirs first before we used up ours, or at least the easy oil.