Obama's Crude Lies

Just as he said during the Sept. 26 University of Mississippi debate with John McCain, the Illinois Democrat claimed during the Nashville town hall setting that "we have 3% of the world's oil reserves and we use 25% of the world's oil. So what that means is that we can't simply drill our way out of the problem."

It's disappointing that McCain failed to call out Obama on his figures, because he had an opening big enough to drive an Exxon Mobil tanker truck through.

The problem isn't Obama's claim about consumption. The U.S. does go through about a quarter of the oil used across the globe (it also, by the way, produces 28% of the world's goods and services, but that's another story).

No, the real problem is that the oft-repeated claim of the U.S. having 3% or less of world reserves doesn't stand up.

Obsolete figures show that the U.S. holds just 20 billion of the 1.3 trillion barrels of the world's crude reserves.

But that doesn't include the estimated 200 billion barrels of oil trapped below two miles of shale in the Bakken Formation, a wildly rich reserve that stretches through Montana and North Dakota.

Neither do Obama's shock data include the more than 130 billion barrels off our coasts that Congress had placed off limits, nor the 1.2 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of shale oil in the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

And we haven't even mentioned Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where 10 billion to 20 billion barrels of easily tapped oil have been sitting idle for decades because a majority of policymakers are cowed by pressure from environmental groups and won't allow drilling in this remote and desolate area.

At one time, Canada was ranked 21st in global oil reserves. It is now second, behind only Saudi Arabia. Its ranking jumped when the U.S. Energy Department formally recognized that the Canadian tar sands hold about 175 billion barrels of oil that is recoverable with current technology under recent economic conditions.

Where will the U.S., currently 11th in the world, land in the rankings when politicians and radical special interests can no longer deny geological and technological realities?

The answer to that question is simple; 

America has more known oil reserves than any other country by far.

According to NPR, the Rocky Mountains contain three times the oil of Saudi Arabia.

An oil field was just recently discovered in the South Dakota/Montana region which has three times as much oil as the Rockies.

There is also a tremendous amount of oil in the ANWR region.

All that oil, and we don't drill for it.

Why?

Because of pressure from environmentalists.

We could be winning the battle for energy independence, but instead, we choose to lose, and thus forfeit our profits into the hands of Jihadists and Communists the world over.

I repeat, we are losing because we choose to lose, and we do so, primarily because of pressure from environmentalist groups.

That's like a football team choosing to lose because of pressure from their own cheerleaders.