A FRIEND OF MINE recently posted on Facebook this story from Investor's Business Daily detailing the United States' oil reserves, which may in fact be much larger than originally thought. Far from only having 22 billion barrels of proven reserves, IBD's John Merline reports the United States has as much as 400 billion barrels of oil recoverable using present technology, and theoretically much more beyond that.
Now, I don't know about you, but when I hear that, it makes me think that we're sitting on top of a glorious ocean of hydrocarbons, just waiting to be exploited and put to good use. We already know, of course, that we have vast amounts of natural gas available to us -- so much gas, in fact, that the price has fallen to roughly $2 per million BTU and our producers are routinely "flaring" the stuff -- that is, burning the excess that can't be transported or otherwise used. So if we've already let the horse ou
I mean, if you consider the tradeoffs inherent to this equation, you've got the environment and global warming concerns (1) on the one hand, and an amazing -- incredible -- unbelievable sum of money on the other (2). So to me, it's worth considering whether what could be done with all that money outweighs any environment problems that may result. You know, perform a cost-benefit analysis.