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U.S. May Have 115 Billion Barrels of Oil Offshore |
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Sunday, 05 April 2009 |
 The U.S. may have as many as 115 billion barrels of “technically recoverable” oil in federal waters, a report Friday from the Interior Department found. The report, prepared by Interior’s Minerals Management Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, also said the Outer Continental Shelf contains as much as 565 trillion cubic feet of
natural gas and that the Pacific and Atlantic coasts hold more than 1,900 gigawatts of potential wind energy.
The assessment is part of a U.S. effort to reduce dependence on
imported energy and respond to climate change brought on carbon
emissions. The Obama administration is working to get an increasing
share of electricity from coastal renewable resources, Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar said today.
“We will in this administration and this time finally get around to
tackling the energy issue that faces America, that faces this world,”
Salazar said in a speech in Crystal City, Virginia.
Technically recoverable resources are those energy supplies that could
be recovered using existing technology without regard to the cost. The
report estimated as many as 55 billion barrels of such oil in the
Atlantic.
The report provided a mean estimate of 86 billion barrels of oil. The mean for natural gas was 420 trillion cubic feet.
The oil and gas projections were based largely on a 2006 assessment of
energy resources. Salazar said that the Atlantic coast estimates may be
less precise because they were done using seismic studies that are 25
years old.
‘A Lot of Guessing’
“We don’t know what’s out in the Atlantic in terms of oil and gas,”
Salazar told reporters. “There is just a lot of guessing that people
make when they talk about oil and gas development off of the Atlantic.”
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the ranking Republican on the Energy
and Natural Resources Committee, said the report highlights the need to
drill for oil and gas while collecting more-current information.
“For the sake of our nation’s economic strength and energy security, we
must allow development in the areas of the OCS that currently show the
most promise, while at the same time aggressively updating our resource
estimates,” Murkowski said.
Former President George W. Bush in July lifted a ban on drilling in the
Outer Continental Shelf, a federally controlled area that extends from
about 3 miles (5 kilometers) offshore to as much as 230 miles. Congress
followed suit in October by allowing its own moratorium on drilling to
expire.
The actions were spurred in part by demands for more access for
drilling on federal land as crude oil futures prices rose to a record
high of $147.27 a barrel in July.
The report also included data on economically recoverable oil and gas.
At a price of $60 per barrel, 52 billion barrels could be available,
the report says. At $160 per barrel, there are 71 billion barrels of
economically recoverable oil.
Outer Continental Shelf drilling in 2007 accounted for 27 percent of total U.S. oil production and 14 percent of gas output.
Oil prices have fallen about 64 percent from the July record. Crude oil
for May delivery rose $4.25, or 8.8 percent, today to settle at $52.64
a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Salazar told reporters that the Interior Department would be publishing
rules in the coming months that would govern how the U.S. will proceed
with development of offshore renewable energy resources.
Source: Bloomberg
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