Our Domestic Oil Resources
- The U.S. has 198 billion barrels of recoverable conventional oil – enough to power the country for the next 29 years at America’s 2010 rate of oil use.
- The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, estimates that the Outer Continental Shelf—which encompasses 1.76 billion acres of submerged, taxpayer-owned lands —contains 86 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, or more than 12 years of oil supply.
- The federal government leases less than 3 percent of the federal offshore areas, and less than 6 percent of federal lands onshore are leased for oil and gas production.
- The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that the 1002 Area of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has a mean expected value of 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil that could be produced at a rate of about one million barrels of oil per day.
- The USGS estimates that unconventional U.S. oil shale resources hold 2.6 trillion barrels of oil, with about 1 trillion barrels that are considered recoverable under current economic and technological conditions. These 1 trillion barrels are nearly four times the amount of oil resources as Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves—a large enough supply for over 140 years at current consumption rates.
- The Department of Energy estimates that U.S. oil sands—another petroleum resource—hold 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
Oil Production Facts
- Petroleum is used to make both gasoline and diesel, which combine to supply 93 percent of our transportation fuels.
- 39 percent of the oil we consumed in 2010 came from U.S. production.
- The U.S. is the third largest oil-producing nation in the world, behind only Saudi Arabia and Russia.
- The Energy Information Administration estimates that 110,000 barrels per day of offshore oil production were lost in 2010 due to the moratorium and de facto moratorium, and 140,000 barrels per day will be lost in 2011.
- In 2009, the Obama administration leased fewer onshore acres for energy development than in any other year on record.
- The top 10 companies which control most oil and gas reserves are foreign, state-owned companies.
Oil Consumption Facts
- In 2010, the U.S. consumed an average of 19 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products per day.
- The U.S. imported on a net basis (imports minus exports) 9.4 million barrels of oil per day.
- About 25 percent of our oil product supply in 2010 arrived from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). OPEC is made up of twelve oil-exporting countries: Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Non-OPEC countries supplied 36 percent.
- Our largest foreign oil supplier is Canada, followed by Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria.
