Entry for October 13, 2006

We had our first snow last night here in Saginaw, so this morning I was doing a rare occurrence for me: I watched the local news. I gave up the local news years ago (about the same time I gave up soda) because I realized that it added nothing beneficial to my life. The only thing I ever tune in for anymore is local election results and an occasion large story. This being the first snow and Friday the 13th, I figured it should be amusing. Plus, I really didn't feel like doing much else.
Along with the road closures they talked about the upcoming elections and gas prices heading back. They showed a number of clips of people from both parties talking about oil to emphasis the fact that both oil prices heading up, and the upcoming elections, were both real stories. What struck me odd is that both candidates talked about our dependence on foreign oil and said that they did not know what our current reserves were or how long they would last. This somehow hit me at an odd angle and I thought I would check it out and post it here on my blog for those candidates far too busy to do the research themselves, but still found time to read my blog.

As of Sept 29, 2006, the US has an Oil Reserve of 687.7 million barrels of oil (1). We currently consume about 9,125,000 barrels a day (2). Soooo, about 75 day’s worth of oil just on the reserves, if we were completely cut off. We do also produce a percentage of our own oil - but that would only get us to about 100 days. And during that time, prices would skyrocket and demand would outweigh supply so much that most individuals would not be able to afford to fill up their cars.

I don't think that the people who hate us would ever cut us off. No dealer ever cuts off their addicts because they know that they are their best customers. What they can do is slowly drive the price up by reducing how much they produce (which OPEC did last week, 3) and sending some of that cash that they made for us to people who want to do us harm or to prop up governments who really, really dislike us inorder to grow their own government as powerful or more powerful then our own (at our expense). Luckily enough for us, our largest importer of oil is Canada - who are wonderful, nice, friendly, sexy, well-hung people who would never raise their prices because they are too good looking and beautiful to do so.

Now of course this doesn't take into account that some of our oil is sweet and some is sour (meaning it can only be turned into certain types) and that there is some argument as to whether or not the reserves actually exist. Also, the oil that we have in reserves is crude oil and would not be ready for consumption for a number of weeks. What's that mean? It means that we are a country addicted to oil, sold to us by our enemies, and encouraged by our government. We have become too dependant, too quickly, without a decent backup plan.

What bothers me more then anything else is that I've yet to hear a candidate talking about how we can reduce our consumption. Instead, it's all about how to get our next fix. If we could only make our own oil. You know, then we could have all that we wanted and never have to pay anyone else. Maybe we could then go into business for ourselves and sell enough to pay for our habit. Man that would be cool, all the oil we could ever want and cash on the side. That would be sweet. Mmmm sweet, sweet oil.. ... .I gotta go. .. ..I gotta go pump a couple of gallons before breakfast - you know, just to get me going. Later.

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/spr/spr-facts.html
www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061008/bs_nm/energy_opec_dc_2