A friend from Nebraska asked me to put the offshore drilling issue into a format her parents back on the farm would understand. As an engineer, and someone passionate about alternative energy and transportation issues, I set out to equate US offshore drilling's potential impact on the world oil market to planting acres of corn in the Midwest. What I found even surprised me. The answer was the equivalent of 180 acres in 2020, and 310 acres in 2030. My friend's parents are semi-retired and still manage to plant 600 acres on their small family farm. Just as you can't affect the world price of corn by planting 310 acres, even 20 years from now offshore drilling just can't put out enough oil to have any impact on world oil price let alone give us any relief today. EIA - Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf By 2020, Offshore drilling would increase production in the lower 48 states from 2.21 million barrels/day to 2.3 million barrels/day or 4.07%. From above, overall US production would be expected to increase at an estimated 43% (percent of US production from lower 48) of that, or 1.74% overall. The US harvested 70,648 Acres of Corn in 2006. 1.74% of that would be 1232 acres. By 2030 overall production increase would be 3%, or 2119 acres. Corn Refiners Association - U.S. Corn Production Those numbers are exaggerated, because the US is the largest corn producer in the world but not the largest oil producer. The US produces only 5.064 million barrels/day, out of the worlds, 82.532 million barrels per day or about 6.14%. In contrast, the US grew 42% of the worlds corn in 2006. So to mirror the impact of offshore drilling on the world oil market, we have to reduce the above acreages by a factor of 6.84. That comes out to 180 acres in 2020, and 310 acres by 2030. U.S. Grains Council | Barley, Corn & Sorghum | Corn Rob
Rob, Suppose we wanted to avoid the whole "corn is for food, not for fuel" polemic. Would it be possible to work up similar acreage figures for turning corn stalks into alcohol with the not yet perfected cellulose to alcohol technology?
I just don't understand how otherwise intelligent people can argue that increased off-shore drilling or drilling in Alaska is going to reduce the price of oil and gasoline today.
Uhm, I hate to rain on your parade, but that column was in thousands of acres, so it's actually 70.6 million acres, not 70.6 thousand acres of corn. Even with that correction, your general point is true. Now that's a gross stereotyping. There are non-Christians who are just as stubborn or ignorant. There was a group of conservative pastors who issued a statement that we need to conserve oil and prepare our country for a peak oil scenario. (Can't remember details enough to Google it without getting a million wrong hits).
Part of it is the "they want it to be true" thing, but I think that another part of it has to do with the way the subject is being talked about. I didn't get this until the other night when I was watching the debate with a group of people and someone explained to me why they didn't buy the arguments against off-shore drilling. I don't agree at all with the explanation I received, but at least it helped me understand why people who are otherwise reasonably intelligent seem to get caught up in what I think is nonsense. The bottom line is that the people who told me this feel that the whole "we use 25% of the world's oil, but only have 3% of the supply" is an apples and oranges comparison. The number they don't understand is the "3% of the supply"; they don't understand how anyone could know this. Their incredulity seems to be based on the shear magnitude of the numbers ("how could so much oil be less than we need") and on the fact that 3% is really a SWAG. Put that together with the stubborn "it's true because I say so" routine and it becomes really hard to convince them of anything. Like I said, I don't agree with their position, but at least I think I understand it better.
Oil companies want to drill, because it's dollars in the bank for them, even though it's an insignificant part of the total world production. Demagogues in the pockets of the oil companies can get away with saying it because the American public does not know how to think skeptically, because as children they had this ability beaten out of them by preachers telling them that you have to believe in crap that makes no sense.
