Image via Wikipedia
The news broke yesterday that ExxonMobil found an oil deposit in the Gulf of Mexico that could possibly contain as much as 700,000,000 barrels of oil. This news was trumpeted by the conservative Wall Street Journal and Republican members of Congress as the perfect reason why we should expand domestic oil production and lessen our dependence on foreign oil.
With this find, that’d be great for a month.
That’s because that’s as long as the 700 million barrels of oil would last if it were used solely in the United States. However, since the oil market is a multinational global market, Exxon‘s huge find would feed the world for exactly 9 days.
Yep.
9 days.
Drill, baby, drill will not only not do a single thing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil (unless the oil companies are nationalized because, well, it is a global market), but it would reduce gas prices by $0.03….in 20 years.
Oh, and the next time you hear a Republican tell you that Obama is stopping US oil companies from drilling and his policies are killing US oil production show them this graph from the US Energy Information Administration…
US Oil Production 2000-2010
…and ask them these questions:
- If what they say about Obama’s energy policy is true, then why has US oil production increased every year since 2008 and is the highest it’s been in nearly 10 years?
- Where were they when US oil production dropped every year under Bush’s two terms by a cumulative 15%?
When you look at the facts, those that shout “Drill, baby, drill” are just dumb, baby, dumb.
Related articles
- Combating the ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Philosophy (bilerico.com)
- Drill Baby Drill? It Won’t Lower Gas Prices. (alan.com)
- Drilling dilemma: Oil industry leases untapped (money.cnn.com)
- Exxon discovers 700 million barrels in Gulf of Mex (marketwatch.com)
