The US could be economically self-sufficient in oil.

To find out if the US could be independent of foreign oil imports, we will need to establish the U. S. requirements for oil, the amount of oil and oil equivalents the US possesses, and the cost of exploiting US resources. The US consumes 7.3 billion barrels of oil per yearThe U. S. consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per day, and consumption has been stable at near that level for about three decades. [1. . http://dr.berkeley.edu... ]. That corresponds to 7.3 billion barrels per year, or 359 billion barrels over the fifty year period considered in this debate. Proved reserves are not a useful measureIn order to qualify as "proved reserves" wells must be drilled and oil flowing. Proved reserves are the working inventory of a producing oil field. [2. . http://tinyurl.com... ]No one will invest tens of millions of dollars to drill even an exploratory well unless there is the possibility that the discovered oil field will be put into production. The US government keeps vast areas off limits to production, so there are no exploratory wells and no proved reserves. Nonetheless, reasonable estimates can be made based upon seismology and the basic geology of the area. that's how oil companies decide where to drill when they are permitted to drill. In some cases, a few exploratory wells were drilled before the area was declared off limits. There is a long history relating proved reserves to actual oil recovery. An analyst writing in 2000 computed "Proved oil reserves today are estimated to be fifteen times greater than the original 1948 estimate despite interim production of eleven times this amount. " [3. . http://www.masterresource.org...] So-called "unconventional" sources of oil and oil equivalents are often omitted entirely from calculation of proved reserves. these include natural gas condensate (the liquid in wet gas), tar sands, and oil shale. They produce products that trade at the same price per barrel as conventional crude oil. Total U. S. reserves are at least 1400 billion barrelsInvestor's Business Daily [IBD] summarized the data on U. S. reserves: "How much recoverable oil does the U. S. have in addition to the 22.3 billion Obama had in mind? Start with the Green River Formation in Wyoming: 1.4 trillion barrels—sixty-two times as much as Obama counts. After Green River, it’s almost embarrassing to count other sources: 86 billion on the outer continental shelf; 24 billion in the lower 48; 2 billion on Alaska’s north slope; 19 billion in Utah tar sands; 12 billion in ANWR. Then add in oil shale: 800 billion just in Wyoming and neighboring states. As IBD sums it up: “When you include oil shale, the U. S. has 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to the Institute for Energy Research, enough to meet all U. S. oil needs for about the next 200 years, without any imports. ” These estimates are almost sure to rise over time—to anywhere from three or four to twenty or twenty-five times as much. " [3. above]The Wikipedia article on oil reserves gives sources for each of the components in the total reserves. [4. . http://en.wikipedia.org...]. The Wiki number agree with the IBD numbers except for oil shale, for which they use the Bureau of Land management's estimate of 2175 billion barrels. As far as can tell, natural gas liquids (NGL) are not included in any of the estimates of reserves cited above. A boom in natural gas production brought NGL production to 860 million barrels today by January of 2011. [5. . http://tinyurl.com...] Total reserves of US natural gas are estimated at 2,543 trillion cubic feet. Currently, about 28 tcf are produced each year, yielding the 860 million barrels of NGL. [6. . http://www.naturalgas.org...] That would put the total reserves of NGL at about 78 billion barrels. Using 7.3 billion barrels as a year's consumption, the US has 31 years in conventional oil and wet gas plus 191 - 297 years in oil shale. As noted in reference, these numbers are sure to rise over time, by a minimum of a factor of three or four. Economic production at $100 per barrelNot all the oil that is recoverable is economically recoverable at $100 per barrel, but it turns out that most of it is. Saudi Arabia has the lowest production costs in the world, producing crude oil for $4 to $6 per barrel. The most expensive recovery methods, according to production experts at oil production giant Schlumberger has "ultra deepwater, oil shales, oil in arctic areas, and oil derived from other liquids remain economical and attractive to investors at $70 or more per barrel more per barrel. " [6. . http://www.wikinvest.com...] Oil shale recovery is expensive because the processing is energy intensive. n 2006, the U. S. Department of Energy put oil shale production as profitable at world market prices of $35 to $54 per barrel, depending on the production method. [7. . http://fossil.energy.gov...] In current dollars, that would be about $42 to $65. In 2010, an industry analyst wrote "Experts say that the average shale oil play requires an oil price of $50/bbl to make a comfortable profit. " [8. . http://www.risk.net...]Production techniques for extracting oil from oil shale are still in their infancy. There a parallel with oil extraction from oil sands where production costs dropped 80% in the first decade of development. [7. above] "“The technical groundwork may be in place for a fundamental shift in oil shale economics,” the Rand Corporation recently declared. “Advances in thermally conductive in-situ conversion may enable shale-derived oil to be competitive with crude oil at prices below $40 per barrel. If this becomes the case, oil shale development may soon occupy a very prominent position in the national energy agenda. ” [9. Oil Shale Reserves . http://dailyreckoning.com... (2009)]Why is production now low? If there are ample reserves economically recoverable at current market prices, it's fair to ask why the U. S. is not producing more of it's own oil. Part of the answer is that oil production is up about 10%, despite production being down on Federal lands and in the Gulf of Mexico. Most of US oil reserves are locked up on Federal lands where drilling is forbidden. Environmental regulation aimed at carbon emissions effectively prohibit oil shale production. However, it's not all the government's fault. Investors are concerned "In 2008 oil dropped from $144 per barrel to $37 dollars per barrel. Could this ever happen again, and could prices levels like that ever be sustained? " [10. . http://seekingalpha.com...] To make a profit on unconventional sources of oil, ices must be sustained at over about $80 per barrel for long enough to recover the capital costs invested. That takes more than a decade. If prices are sustained at current high levels for a number of years, confidence in sustained prices will build and investment will follow. If the government leased government lands for exploration and production, the least expensive recovery would go into production first. That would produce a ear tern spurt in US oil production. It would take a decade to get the conventional oil sources into use. Oil shale would, if allowed, catch up as the technology is developed. Government policy could support that buy contracting for future delivery of oil from oil oil shale at the $100 price. Production from the 31 year supply of conventional oil would overlap that from the 200+ years of oil shale. Keeping in mind that reserves are likely underestimated by at least a factor of three or four, fifty years of oil independence is highly probable.