Originally Posted by JCL

Back on the theme of increasing domestic production, and focusing on the supply side of the equation....

I came across this today, and thought of this thread. The USGS reduced their previous (2002) estimate of undiscovered conventional oil in the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve and associated waters by 90%. This isn't all of Alaska, but it is a sizeable area. This new estimate is based on more recent exploration, and counts the technically recoverable oil and gas. Gas reserves were also reduced. So, it isn't just in Saudi that reserves have been overstated. This entire estimated reserve would supply all oil needs in the US for about 45 days by one calculation. Sort of puts a cramp in the 'drill baby drill' promoters in Alaska.


USGS Release: USGS Oil and Gas Resource Estimates Updated for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) (10/26/2010 12:43:17 PM)

Edit:

I wondered how comparable the NPRA is compared to the ANWR, since there is a lot of discussion about drilling in the ANWR. The NPRA is 23 million acres, the ANWR is 19 million acres. Comparable, at first glance. They are both on the North Slope, where the oil is. We don't know with any confidence what reserves the ANWR contains, since the estimates are older than the old NPRA estimates. However, in 1998 the USGS put the reserves in the ANWR at between 5.7 and 16 billion barrels, with a mean estimate of 10.4 billion barrels. That is comparable to the 10.6 billion barrels that the USGS estimated were in the NPRA in 2002, and which has been downgraded by 90%, above.