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Talk:Oil reserves/Archive 1

Should this be added to the US section? http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/pure_products_of_america/who_says_theres_4.php —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.91.235.10 (talk) 01:42, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. It's just another case of people not taking their medication like their psychiatrists told them to. In reality, the Williston Basin has been rather thoroughly explored and drilling a bunch of new horizontal wells into the old formations, while no doubt profitable at current prices, is not going to keep all those millions of SUVs supplied with cheap gasoline. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 04:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, now that the USGS report has actually been released, can I suggest that people actually READ them before quoting what someone said they might say before anybody actually saw them. And learn to recognize when people are blowing smoke. What the USGS actually SAID, when the actual report was released, was that the Bakken formation may contain between 3.0 and 4.5 billion barrels of undiscovered oil. Not 175 to 500 billion barrels as the speculators said. Big difference - 3.0 to 4.5 billion barrels is only 5 to 7 months consumption for the US at current rates. Bottom line: sell the Hummer, buy a Toyota hybrid. And don't invest in oil stocks unless you know how to read the geological reports for yourself. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 18:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Leave the opinion out of wikipedia, Rocky. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.219.122.113 (talk) 02:58, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed. per Wikipedia:Verifiability I will revert to my version[1]. --Savedthat 18:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Repeat as necessary: ibid...ibid...ibid...ibid.... You're challenging the material on a sentence by sentence basis, which is ridiculous. Most of the sources are already cited, just not on a chapter/paragraph/sentence basis. You might have to read the references from one end to the other to find the information.

On to details of what you're asking for: Oil reserves in Saudi Arabia - #1 in the world - are a state secret, so the only official source is the Saudi government, which doesn't supply details. Many geologists have doubts about their numbers.

In Canada - #2 in the world - you have the opposite problem, too much information. Much of it is hard to understand. Recently, Canada increased its reserves from 5 billion barrels to 180 billion barrels, but as the result of technological breakthroughs, not drilling. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has been quoted as saying that's an understatement and the number is probably closer to 310 billion barrels. But it doesn't really matter because Canada doesn't have enough manpower to produce that much oil.

And the bottom line is - this is a very arcane field and a lot of the data is flaky and subject to interpretation. Threatening to delete information just because you don't understand it or can't find the sources without reading all the references is not exactly the way to build a consensus. Of course, you can delete it but someone else can revert your deletions. RockyMtnGuy 06:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proper Citation - Even though a source has already been cited, the issue is whether it has been cited FOR THAT PROPOSITION or for some other material fact\data assertion. For example, as of 7-21-2008 nowhere on this topic page was there a source cited for the assertion that the U.S. Production rate for its own oil reserves is about 5 million barrels per day, nor was there ever a source cited for the assertion that the U.S. proven oil reserves total about 21 billion barrels. Too much of the most crucial fact\data assertions on this oil reserves page have no information source cited, apparently because the soure was already cited in support of some other fact\data assertion. It is not sufficient to merely assert that EIA said so. A pinpoint citation is necessary that specifies what article or report title, what entity did it, when the report was published and ideally a web page link to the specific document that contains the fact or data assertion. This is needed to make the information USEABLE. Most responsible people who embark on research must check their sources for accuracy. Verification citation is what makes this Wiki material USEABLE.--Reflecting Pool (talk) 21:47, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See this discussion for the sources you are looking for. Please don't add sources in the middle of sentences if possible. NJGW (talk) 21:58, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard of one billion barrels being referred to as a gigabarrel. Sure it sounds cool, but we're not talking about megaton nuclear bombs or terabyte hard drives here.

See the archived discussion here Cheers Geologyguy 23:12, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've never heard anyone use gigabarrels before, either, and I have 35 years experience in the industry. The standard industry term would be "billions of barrels", with the understanding that it would be American billions (10⁹) of American oil barrels (approx. 159 litres), and not British billions (10¹²) of British Imperial barrels (approx. 164 litres). Apparently some computer geeks have been editing Wikipedia articles about oil and gas without understanding what standard industry terminology means. The classic case was when someone converted Mcf to "millions of cubic feet" on the assumption that M stood for the Greek "mega". Bad guess. It stands for the Latin "mille" which means thousand. The abbreviation for "millions of cubic feet" is MMcf. RockyMtnGuy 16:41, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree: Gigabarrels and Billion barrels is the same number why make this confusing to readers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by OxAO (talk • contribs) 18:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Billion is not not confusing since it has two meanings but if gigabarrel isn't used then get rid of it ... like I've been doing. JIMp _talk·cont 17:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Brazil is not included in this list yet, but with this discovery I think it would have to join the list, even im not sure its reservers oversize Russias. Im not certain yet, but it has been announced that this discovery sums 50% of all what had been ever discovered in Brazil; Brazil became autosuficient in 2006/7 so it now should start as a rising oil exporting country. José Sérgio Gabrielli, president of Petrobras, said in an interview that this put Br, which was in 24th place in world oil reserves ranking, in the 8th or 9th place - with the add of 5 to 8 gigabarrels to the previous 14,4 gigabarrels. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.33.172.80 (talk) 01:14, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(after edit conflict) Although Brazil produces more than 2 million barrels per day, making it #13 on the list of petroleum producing countries, its proved reserves are only 12 billion barrels, ranking 16th [2]. Brazil's net exporter status is significantly impacted by its leading role in ethanol production, not so much by its oil reserves. There is no particular reason Brazil is not discussed here, though the list is pretty much limited to the leading reserve holders. It is not clear what discovery you refer to, but even if Brazil's reserves were to increase by 50%, that would still only be 18 billion barrels - not that much, comparatively. Cheers Geologyguy 01:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Despite what I said above, after reading the reports it does look like a very important discovery for Brazil. It will take years to produce, and the ultimate recovery remains to be confirmed, but it does sound like at least 5 million billion barrels - but one takes such press announcements with several grains of salt. Cheers Geologyguy 01:42, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

did you mean 5 million barrels or 5 billion barrels? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vexorg (talk • contribs) 01:28, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The discoveries that are mentioned are related on many news websites, related to the Tupi oil camp. Here goes some links:

Oil discovery rocks Brazil Underwater oil discovery to transform Brazil into a major exporter —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.20.227.123 (talk) 02:06, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Like all these reports of vast new oil discoveries, this one must be taken with a grain of salt. Brazil has no real idea how much oil is in this field, and won't know until it does considerably more drilling. Estimates range from 33 billion barrels on the high end to 600 million barrels on the low end, which shows the degree of uncertainty. What is not uncertain is that it is hundreds of kilometres offshore under thousands of metres of water and thousands more metres of rock - which means that it will cost in the $100 billion range to develop and it will take nearly a decade before it will produce any oil. And while finding it is very good news for Brazil, it is not big enough to offset expected production declines in the North Sea, Mexico, Russia and elsewhere over the next decade. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 05:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some one just asked this at Talk:Peak oil as well. Just remember, at the top estimate of 30 billion barrels, that's less than one year of oil for the world (at the current world consumption rate of 87 million b/day). NJGW (talk) 14:14, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Russia is marked on the map as a country with largest oil reserves. But...that's all - there's not only a section, but even a single word "Russia" can't be found in this long article. Is this intentional, or it is believed here, that e.g. oil that received by Europe via Druzhba pipeline from Russia in fact has its origins in the outer space? Av0id3r (talk) 22:04, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please feel free to add information on Russia's oil reserves. --Skyemoor (talk) 12:01, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I added a section on Russia to placate those who feel it should be mentioned. The Russians are possibly kidding themselves. Although it has by far the largest natural gas reserves, Russia has only the 8th largest oil reserves, ranking between Venezuela and the US. Unlike the top 7 resource holders, their reserves to production ratio is not very good. Russia is a very old oil producing area, and they have already produced most of their oil. At current rates they have only 17 years of production left out of their existing reserves, so they should be exploring enthusiastically to prevent a production decline. In communist era, they did severe damage to their oil fields by overproducing them, and at current rates they may be continuing to do damage to them. Possibly a little more restraint and planning for an oil-free future would be advisable (given their enormous gas reserves.) RockyMtnGuy (talk) 20:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The verbiage on oil shale was exceeding the size of the rest of the United States article, so I truncated it and linked to the oil shale reserves article, which is where it properly should go. Americans seem to be getting delusional on the subject of petroleum as their oil reserves fall closer to the empty mark, so here's the facts: Nothing is happening on the oil shale front. To qualify as proven reserves, oil shale needs to have commercial scale mines and processing facilities, not just a few teakettle research operations, so it doesn't properly belong in the oil reserves article. Almost all research on oil shale was shut down during the Ronald Reagan era, and it has never recovered. From a standing start it would take decades to develop a full-scale commercial operation, so don't buy a new V10 pickup truck in anticipation of fueling it up on gasoline from oil shale.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 16:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that oil shale in the U.S. should be classified as deposits and not as reserves. It will take a long before commercial scale shale oil production starts in the U.S. Right now only China, Brazil and Estonia have commercial production of shale oil.Beagel (talk) 17:54, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We can't blanket list oil reserves as being reasonably certain if 1/2 the world's reserves are state secrets. What will be fine for those companies having to report via SEC regulations does not translate into the rest of the world, so uncertainty and doubt must be elevated to all portions of the summary and definitions. 198.151.13.8 (talk) 16:35, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

SEC regulations are far too conservative for this type of article. The SEC doesn't even consider the Canadian oil sands to be "oil reserves", even though Canada is producing a million barrels per day out of them. So, are companies there only "claiming" to be producing oil out of these nonexistent oil reserves and selling this vaporous product to the US for incredible amounts of money, or are they doing it for real? Yes they are doing it for real, and Americans can't believe the price even though they are paying it. These reserves are reservoir engineering estimates based on the best possible data. If the data is pretty bad, you factor that into your calculations, giving an accurate assessment of an inaccurate number. What oil reserves are is what people in the industry refer to as a SWAG (or Scientific Wild Ass Guess). It's all one big crap shoot. If you don't know how to play craps, you don't understand it and you'll never make money in the oil business. For more information, see game theory. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 18:34, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I heard recently that an oil deposit had been discovered in Brazil that would potentially make Brazil holder of the largest oil reserve in the world. Has anyone else heard anything on this issue? 216.191.213.114 (talk) 18:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC) Never mind, just saw the previous thread. 216.191.213.114 (talk) 18:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just undid the edit by user:Njreader101 because the refs used were from wp:POV and wp:fringe sources. For a long and detailed discussion of what is wrong with these assertions, see Talk:Petroleum#Peak_oil. NJGW (talk) 17:56, 14 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the following sentence, which I believe was a misrepresentation of the cited article. As I understand from the USGS release, Yukon Flats is a different region from NRPA or ANWR, and thus this is a small discovery rather than a 25x reduction from previous estimates.

The estimate for ANWAR reserves was revised downward by the USGS in late 2004 to roughly 0.173 billion barrels of oil and 0.127 billion barrels of natural gas.^[1]

--Dzhim (talk) 01:27, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it that when I load the barrel data from the table into Excel I do not get the same number of years of "Reserve Life" for Iran, Iraq, or UAE? Table says 74, 101, 107 while my Excel file shows 96, 85, 106. I suspect either the data is wrong or table footnote 3 is wrong. 71.157.170.83 (talk) 03:04, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're right. I fixed it, so unless someone sees that we've both made some error it should be good for now. It could have been someone updating some numbers and not others, or it could have been some vandal that thought he was sly. NJGW (talk) 03:25, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seems that the important issue isn't just rate of production. It is rate of production minus consumption or exports. If Saudia Arabia consumed 99% of its own production it wouldn't be such an important player. 71.157.170.83 (talk) 04:19, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense to me (see Export Land Model), though I wouldn't create a whole section talking about it as that's the domain of other pages. You can do it if you like. If you're not sure how you can just report the numbers here and I'll give it a shot (still learning tables). NJGW (talk) 04:40, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The production numbers given in this article are wrong--EIA lists world production as 86 Million barrels/day not 46-- this also changes the reserve lifetime to about 35 years, which is consistent with other sources128.149.49.49 (talk) 21:25, 14 July 2008 (UTC) Rob[reply]

That's not total world production. I changed to table to explain that it's total of top 12 reserves. NJGW (talk) 21:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As of July 21, 2008 this Oil Reserves Wiki page contains an inordinate number of fact\data assertions that have no citation footnote explaining where the fact\data information came from. Verifiable citations to the source of the facts\data asserted is what makes this information USABLE. Usability of the facts\data information is what gives Wikipedia high traffic and credibility. Citations need to be pinpoint, delineating the entity source, the document or report title for that particular fact assertion, the date of the report (date published), and ideally, where possible, the website URL that contains the specific facts\data being asserted. Without such citations, an asserted fact is NOT a fact at all. It is merely opinion, possibly by someone who does not know. For example, as of July 20, 2008 there were no sources cited for the assertion that U.S. Oil Reserves amounted to 21 billion barrels, or for the assertion that the U.S. production Rate`was 5.1 million barrels per day in 2006. These fact\data assertions constitute paramount claims yet are rendered useless (unusable)(unreliable) without source citations. --Reflecting Pool (talk) 22:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See this discussion for the sources you are looking for. Please don't add sources in the middle of sentences if possible. NJGW (talk) 21:58, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This page might also interest you: Wikipedia:Cite#When to cite sources NJGW (talk) 22:52, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In general, most of the information can be found on the U.S. Energy Information Authority website: http://www.eia.doe.gov/ , the U.S. Central Intelligence Administration factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ , or the International Energy Agency Oil Market Report: http://omrpublic.iea.org/ . However, it gets tedious quoting these sources over and over and over: ibid, ibid, ibid, ad nauseum. And, unfortunately, much of the original source data is secret - you can't find it available publicly and if you start snooping, people will start following you around. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 16:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is not clear from the article if the "Proven Reserves" includes the oil under those areas in which drilling has been prohibited (both offshore and on land) for environmental and other reasons. If someone understands this issue, would they please clear this up for us? Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 18:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to say that the U.S. 20 billion barrel reserve does not include development prohibited fields. That's based on this NYT article that reports the EIA as saying "roughly 75 billion barrels of oil in the United States are off-limits for development, and that 21 percent of this oil — or 16 billion barrels — is covered by the offshore moratorium." RockyMtnGuy would know for sure, and could also qualify these numbers for us (since there's a BIG difference between proven and probable, and 75 billion barrels sounds pretty extreme). NJGW (talk) 19:39, 26 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If drilling is prohibited, it should definitely NOT be included in proven reserves. In order to be proven, reserves must be producible using current technology, under current economic conditions, and (and this should probably be added) under current government regulations. The existence of these resources is purely hypothetical, and nobody has enough data to predict the quantity to two significant digits (or even one), so I suspect a political motivation (you-know-who would like to open these areas up for drilling). And then there's my favorite saying about the EIA and the USGS, "They've always been wrong before, so why would you expect them to be right this time?" RockyMtnGuy (talk) 04:34, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is not answering my question, which is inspired by the national dialogue. My question is "How long would the oil that the US has last if we did not not get any other oil from elsewhere?" I gather that the 11 or 3 year figure in the article is not accurate because it excludes that oil which has been banned from development for, what may be called, "political" reasons. OK then, removing all political considerations (a thought experiment), How much oil is there altogether under US territory? How long would it last? Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 19:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A better question would be "how fast could we pump it out?" Assuming oil imports stopped tomorrow, we would still only be able to pump out the same amount as we are pumping out today. Just imagine how much an oil producer would love to be selling twice as many barrels as they are right now. If the bans are lifted, the new question is how long would it take to develop the new areas... I'm no expert but I keep seeing the experts throw around numbers like 10-20 years before production actually becomes significant (you have to remember the production curve has to ramp up before it peaks), and once the new areas are producing, you have to figure that the old areas will have declined quite a bit, so total production will not be any higher than it is today.

BTW, I'm not really sure what you mean by "political considerations". That implies that there are only political reasons at stake, rather than environmental, technical, legal, or economical reasons. NJGW (talk) 19:12, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not helpful. This is not an arguement. Just a request for the facts. How much oil is there, really? How long would it last?Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 19:41, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The fact is that the U.S. has a little less than 21 billion barrels of oil left. It is hypothesized that there might be another 75 billion barrels which has not been found yet. Note that this is not a fact because it has not been proven to be true, and it's not even a theory because there is no scientific consensus that it is true (many geologists would disagree). How long will it last? Well, hypothetically, the 21 billion barrels known to exist would take 11 years to produce if they could continue to produce it at the same rate as at present (which they cannot). However, the ratio is useful because it does illustrate that oil independence for the U.S. is a lost cause. If they did find something - and that is not a given - by the time they got it on-line (minimum 10 years), the current 21 billion barrels would almost be gone, and the additional oil would only cause a blip in the end of the decline curve. The hypothetical 75 billion barrels would only represent a hypothetical 10 years of consumption. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 20:41, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry you thought I was being unhelpful, but the U.S. now produces 5 million barrels per day (and falling since 1970), but uses 20 million barrels each day (and rising, but maybe it fell a little this year). Therefore, how long domestic production would "last" is kind of laughable as a question (not a reflection on you, but rather on the national dialouge you refer to): the U.S. will still be pumping oil 20, 30, maybe even 50-100 years from now, but it will never be enough to satisfy domestic consumption unless domestic consumption drops to the levels that are physically producible. That's the nature of oil production (and of the production of any limited resource: first it's easy to get and production races up, then it gets harder and harder to get and production falls back down... and if nothing is done about an impending supply drop then interesting times ensue). NJGW (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So then, all of the talk about "Opening up off-shore oil" is about an insignificant amount of oil, an amount that would not supply the US for any important length of time? Even so then why is it so hard to know just much oil we are talking about, within a margin of uncertainty, of course? I am trying to understand how much oil has been banned from development, for one reason or another, and could be used if the political decision to do so was made, (in the US only) not that oil which has been or is about to be developed and pumped, and which seems to be more clearly understood. Forget about how long it would last. I understand that question involves even more uncertainties. Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 21:19, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(undent) Well, the likelihood of the U.S. ever producing 20 million b/day seems less than slim-to-nil, and as RMG points out, new oil wouldn't be on the market for 10 years anyway... so the discussion is just plain ill-framed. As far as reserve amounts go (and remember that just because it's there, we haven't said how fast it can come), we're talking about the volume of a resource that's 1000's of ft underground, and in the case of off-shore more 1000's of feet under water. Estimates are given in terms of Estimated Ultimate Retrieval (EUR), and are broken down into a 95% confidence interval (so that p95 EUR tells you someone believes there is a 95% chance that this much will be extracted before the well is technically dry, and p5 EUR tells you they say there's a 5% chance for that amount). I can't comment on what exactly goes into these estimates, but I imagine it involves quite a bit of seismic imaging, test drilling (when allowed), and way more guestimation. The fact is we don't know exactly how much oil is in banned areas, and as RMG said above "They [the folks we're quoting for p95 and p5] have always been wrong before, so why would you expect them to be right this time?" The real point is that no matter how much is there, a) it won't make a difference to anyone for at least 10 years, and b) even then it won't be enough per annum to cover consumption anyway (unless we drastically drop our consumption by then, making the problem moot anyway).

By the way, I think we're now getting into territory which would be helpful in the article, namely how reserves are quantified and issues surrounding that. NJGW (talk) 21:57, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion is a disappointment to me. I had hoped that a simple change to the article would answer the question; a statement something like this (Using fictitious numbers):

United States proven oil reserves declined to a little less than 21 billion barrels (3.3×109 m3) in 2006. This includes 6 billion barrels in areas where development has been prohibited by legislation or executive order.

I still don't see why such a simple statement is so difficult to make. Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 20:34, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I hadn't realized that's what you were getting at. My bad if I missed it. Well, the fact is that reserves don't count banned development areas so you can't say that anyway. NJGW (talk) 20:40, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What you could say is: United States proven oil reserves declined to a little less than 21 billion barrels (3.3×109 m3) in 2006. This does not include any reserves in areas where development has been prohibited by legislation or executive order. Which pretty well summarizes it. Discussing what might be in those areas is speculative and has POV problems with U.S. politics. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 20:59, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK then, How much oil IS there in those areas where development has been prohibited by legislation or executive order? That was my original question? Why leave it vague in the article? Doesn't somebody, somewhere have some idea of this number? Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 22:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you want the exact answer you'll have to extract it all and then see what you got. Even the EIA won't give an exact number, just the EUR stats. I think it's pretty clear that nobody really knows how much is there, it just seems like extracting it at this point would be too little too late. NJGW (talk) 23:12, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is not a matter of the exact number. None of the numbers in the article are exact. A number to the same degree of imprecision as all the other numbers would be close enough. It is a question of some number, some knowledgeable person's best guess. This issue has become a part of our national dialogue. "Should we open up off-shore areas for drilling?" That is one question that the country is considering. How can we answer this, each citizen, each voter for himself, without, at least, having some idea of how much oil we are talking about? Your opinion, or that of some "Pundit" on TV that there is or is not enough oil to be worth pumping is not the final word on this subject. I don't believe that my request that this information be put into the Wikipedia article is unreasonable. If I had any idea of where to look, I would find it myself and put it in. Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 23:37, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(undent)First off let's be clear that you've changed the question as we've gone along, and only recently explained what you wanted to place in the article. Secondly, we've now come full circle to the main problem, which isn't how much oil is in the ground, but how fast we can get to it. There could be zillions of barrels under the ground, but if it takes 20 years of development to reach it it's not going to help us out. Right now we know for a fact that

1. the U.S. will be producing at most 5 million barrels per day for at least 10 years, and
2. today we use 20 million barrels a day so we need to import at least 15 million barrels.

The real question isn't how much oil is underground, what would it take to end oil imports. We won't end it by drilling more oil for at least 10 years (and even after 10 years it doesn't look good... unless we're not using 20 million/day by then). NJGW (talk) 23:48, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Former head of EIA: "Offshore oil drilling is expensive and unlikely to lower oil prices or have a dramatic impact on the world oil market. We shouldn’t rule out some carefully monitored expansion of lands available for exploration and development. But opening up more offshore areas in a country that has been drilling away since 1859 won’t be a game changer in an expanding world oil market... The amount of fuel we consume is so large that subsidies will have unacceptable budget impacts for any fuel that achieves broad usage. The key policy here is making sure the fossil fuels pay their own way for external costs related to national security and the environment."[3] 68.39.252.117 (talk) 19:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think we're being a little loose with terms. The US produces 5m bbls of Crude Oil/day. We consume 20.68m bbls of Petroleum Products/day. The latter figure includes ngl and gas condensate. If you want to put consumption on equal footing, we (net) import 12m bbls/day of ''Petroleum Products. The EIA [4] reports our "Dependence on Net Petroleum Imports" as 58.2% (which is 12/20.68) in 2007.--Work permit (talk) 03:34, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind. I found answers elsewhere.

Alexselkirk1704 (talk) 20:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Over 99% of Canadian oil exports are sent to the United States, making Canada, not Saudi Arabia, the United States' largest supplier of oil. The conclusion of this sentence doesn't make any sense. When I read it, it claims that Canada is sending 99% of its oil exports to the US and that makes it the largest supplier of oil... but that is a fairly meaningless sentence. Even if Canada is the largest supplier of oil in the US, the fact that Canada sends 99% of their reserves doesn't exactly tell us why they are the biggest supplier of oil. Does Saudi Arabia send 50% of theirs? 20%? 90%? and 99% of what value? Basically claiming 99% of some undefined value compared to an unstated value, doesn't exactly draw some meaningful conclusion. It is extremely vague.--Crossmr (talk) 06:47, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't draw a conclusion, it's a simple statement of related two facts: 99% of Canadian oil exports go to the U.S., and Canada is the largest source of U.S. oil imports. It leaves out a lot of detail and doesn't draw conclusions, mostly because some Wikipedians seem to be unhappy with both the details and the conclusions it might draw. The underlying facts are that Canada and Saudi Arabia are both major oil exporters. Saudi Arabia exports much more oil (it's #1 in the world), but its exports go to a number of different markets, notably Europe and Asia and therefore it ranks #2 in terms of imports into the U.S. The article could draw a variety of conclusions from that (which somebody would almost certainly delete), notably that if Canada ceased exporting oil, the consequences to the U.S. would be more severe than if Saudi Arabia stopped exporting oil (particularly since much of the Canadian exports are in the form of of refined products and the U.S. has insufficient refinery capacity make up the difference). The flip side is that if Saudi Arabia ceased exporting (more likely), Europe and Asia would be hit harder than the U.S. It didn't mention what proportion of Saudi Arabian exports go to the U.S. since that really should be covered under the Saudi Arabian subsection. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:14, 28 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It does, with the part of the sentence which says "making Canada, not Saudi Arabia". It is written as some kind of conclusive proof that the fact that Canada gives 99% of its oil to the US makes it that position. While the volume of oil given to the US puts it in that position, the simple fact that it is 99% of all Canada's exports, doesn't. If a previous sentence were to talk about the actual volume of barrels that Saudi Arabia sent to the US and then this sentence gave an exact number of how many Canada sends to the US this sentence would make a lot more sense, but a simple vague reference to a value without comparison to another value doesn't making the meaning and purpose of this sentence clear. They're two separate thoughts that aren't joined together properly. It is like saying "Jim spends 43% of his spare time preparing for his class, making him, not Sam, a great teacher" the "evidence" given in this sentence to support the statement is vague and has little meaning. We don't know how long Sam spends preparing, what percentage, and even so, who has more free time to begin with. Maybe 43% of Jim's free time is less than 10% of Sam's free time.--Crossmr (talk) 10:07, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't. Read the article. Your whole statement above is moot. The old version (which you are referring to) invited those who have been doing a lot of reading on the topic of petroleum to read between the lines as RMG suggests. NJGW (talk) 14:12, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I realize it doesn't now, but he was defending the sentence after it had been changed, so I thought I'd further explain why I felt it was vague and worded poorly.--Crossmr (talk) 14:14, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible that I'm too logical and know too much about the underlying data to write these articles. In this case, you're drawing too many conclusions from two simple statements of fact and a simple logical relationship between them:

1. Canada sends 99% of its oil exports to the U.S. (something many people do not know)
2. Canada and not Saudi Arabia is the largest supplier of oil to the U.S. (something many people do not know)
3. Fact #1 results in fact #2 (a logical relationship)

Now, the logical relationship can be proven by changing the underlying data (which is in the article but you have to dig for it). For instance, if Canada sent 50% of its oil to the U.S. and 50% to China (which is possible in future if the U.S. congress does not smarten up), then Saudi Arabia and not Canada would become the largest supplier to the U.S. We could go on to speculate how many American SUVs would be converted to scrap metal and sent to China to build new cars for newly affluent Chinese under such a scenario, but that would be getting beyond the scope of the article. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 14:43, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

99% of what? As I pointed out above in my teacher example, a percentage is a non-specific value. Unless we assume that Canada and Saudi Arabia both export the same amount of oil each day, and we know the Saudi Arabia percentage amount, we can't compare them. If I say "50% of people in class A like apples. 40% of people in Class B like oranges. Therefore more people like apples than oranges". Turns out there are only 10 people in class A, and 30 people in Class B. So in reality more people prefer oranges (the rest of the people prefer pineapples for the sake of argument). Percentages are meaningless in this context to make some kind of case to draw a conclusion unless all the numbers from which those percentages are drawn are made available. If the sentence prior to this said: "Canada exports 2 million barrels of oil a day, and Saudi Arabia exports 5 million barrels of oil a day. Since Canada exports 99% of its oil to the USA and Saudi Arabia only 20%, it makes Canada, not Saudi Arabia, the largest provider for the US". A percentage is not a logical relationship. A percentage gives a relative value to the group from which it is taken. "I send 50% and you send 20%" is a very different statement from "I sent 5 and you send 2"--Crossmr (talk) 02:41, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is this a linguistics lesson or an article discussion? Either way, two sentences before the 99% figure we see this interesting remark: "[Canada] exported 840 million barrels (134×106 m3) to the U.S."... leading me to assume that it's 99% of 848.5. But just in case I wasn't in the mood for assuming, it's a good thing that both of those statements have sources I can check. NJGW (talk) 15:28, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you really want to know, it's on the National Energy Board site: http://www.neb.gc.ca In 2007, Canada exported 285,099.0 cubic metres per day (1,793,219 bbl/d) of crude oil, of which 282,014.7 cubic metres per day (1,773,819 bbl/d) went to the U.S. and 3,084.3 cubic metres per day (19,400 bbl/d) went to other countries. That doesn't include refined products, which are accounted for separately. You can also find it broken down by month, and what area in the U.S. it went to. And it's also available in both metric and imperial units, per day, per month and per year, and both English and French. Note that these volumes vary widely from month to month (in April 2008 Canada exported 351,503 cubic metres per day (2,210,890 bbl/d)). Regardless, it's more than any other country exports to the U.S., which information is available on the U.S. Energy Information Administration web site. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 21:41, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]