"Republican senators are accusing President Obama of pushing a "less-than-honest" claim about the scarcity of domestic oil, after a U.S. Geological Survey study showed the United States might actually hold a quarter of the world's untapped, undiscovered supply.
The president often uses a much different statistic in speeches.
He said Tuesday, as he has before, that "the problem is we use more than 20 percent of the world's oil and we only have 2 percent of the world's proven oil reserves."
"Even if we drilled every square inch of this country right now, we'd still have to rely disproportionately on other countries for their oil," Obama said, while pitching a plan to crack down on oil market speculators.
But a U.S. Geological Survey released Wednesday paints a seemingly different picture. The analysis showed the world outside of the U.S. holds 565 billion barrels of undiscovered conventional oil -- it was the first such study in 12 years. The study did not address U.S. resources, but a prior analysis by the Energy Information Administration pegged the country's supply at 198 billion barrels. That works out to 26 percent of the world supply.
Sens. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, suggested Thursday that the 2 percent stat is becoming obsolete.
"Well, there goes President Obama's favorite talking point," Inhofe said in a statement....."
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1 comment:
If the barriers against shale could ever get broken, we would have a lot more than 26%.
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