Oil Patch Math Part Two: One Million Barrels An Hour
Did a little more figuring today, after my colleague, financial editor Jeannie Stell, showed me some interesting data at www.ewg.org.
Bottom line is this: If an independent oil company called Marbob Energy Corp., based in Artesia, New Mexico, produced 2,992,879 barrels of oil in one year, that oil was consumed in a short 3.6 hours (based on 2003’s rate of U.S. oil consumption).
Today, four years later, the numbers are all going to be a bit bigger–more people, more cars, more electric generation, more petrochemical usage. But in the end, this equals about 0.83 million barrels per hour.
If the U.S. does not adopt energy efficiency to a greater degree than it already has, it will be closing in on consumption of nearly 1 million barrels per hour.
Is anybody finding that much new oil at that rate–and at a price anyone can afford?
This has got to be reversed!
–Leslie Haines, Editor in chief, Oil and Gas Investor, lhaines@hartenergy.com
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June 19th, 2008 at 8:14 am
This is shocking. I think you are exactly right. It is not the world’s oil and gas endowment that is at issue, it is the rate of usage.