Not misleading. Trying to make a point.
The 5 million barrel OPEC figure is tough to replace. The 2 million barrel Persian Gulf figure, however, is doable in a relatively short term, if we want to.
The tendency is to look at the 60% we import as being an impossibility, and then to write off every alternative as being pointless. I just read something today that called drilling offshore California a “cynical sop” because it would only generate a small percentage of our total energy needs. You see similar things said with respect to ANWR, and oil shale, and every other alternative. Sure, the half-million bpd ANWR would generate is only a couple percent of our total usage, but its 25% of what we get from the Persian Gulf.
And so forth. The few hundred thousand bpd we’d get from increased drilling off California is only a couple percent of the total, but a fair percent of what we get from the middle east.
If merely announcing that we might open up drilling can stabilize prices, shifting another couple million bpd to our soil would do that much more. You want to get all 5mm bpd done? Fine, but it will take a little longer. 2mm bpd can be done relatively quickly, we just have to be serious enough to do it.
If your point is we need to replace all 5 million bpd, we’re in agreement. Sources in this hemisphere are not at risk in the way Persian Gulf sources are, but I’d like to see us completely independnent. Obviously 5 million takes longer than 2 million, but can be done. Do what we did to replace the 2 million, but do it twice.
If your point is that replacing 5 million is hopeless, then I beg to differ.
Okay, we seem to have the same goal in mind. Anything we do to produce more of our domestic resources helps. We don’t have to replace it all.
I suspect now that the oil we get from Iraq and Saudi Arabia is more secure than the supply from Venezuela, and probably Nigeria on a short term. That was what I was trying to point out.