Only a small amount of crude oil is directly consumed in the United States. Nearly all of the crude oil that is produced in or imported into the United States is refined into petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, and jet fuel, which are then consumed. Liquids produced from natural gas processing are also consumed as petroleum products. Renewable biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, are used as substitutes for or as additives to refined petroleum products. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) includes biofuels in consumption of petroleum products.1
In 2015, the United States consumed a total of 7.08 billion barrels of petroleum products, an average of about 19.4 million barrels per day.2
Note the mention of petro from natural gas & renewables. If I am reading the data correctly, natural gas processing alone supplies about 1/4 of US petroleum products:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_snd_d_nus_mbbl_m_cur.htm
So, in effect, the 1.2 billion barrels of oil discovered gets stretched out a little. And, more importantly, the new discoveries keep coming in.
Further, consumption is fairly stable, and the contribution of oil shale / tight oil is expected to resume its upward trend:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=27612
Oil from shale in the trillions of barrels is out there: Assuming a supportive gov't (yeah, I know, that's a BIG assumption), lack of a societal collapse, etc., even the harder to recover deposits WILL eventually be tapped. It is (or should be) just a matter of technology and competition from other sources. If more tight oil is not tapped, that just means other sources turned out to be sufficient.
Incidentally, Wikipedia has a very interesting article on “History of the oil shale industry in the United States”, except that the article is a complete “fail” regarding the last several years.
If I remember correctly, there were people saying that we would have exhausted the World’s Petroleum supply by now.
I believe they also said the Arctic Ice Sheet would completely disappear and Florida would be under ten feet of Water.
Recently, those same people said Donald J. Trump would never be Elected President.
WRONG
WRONg
WROng
WRong
Wrong
wrong
wron
wro
wr
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Never mind. LOL