Drilling in ANWR versus inflating your tires
ABC News has a fact check piece about Obama’s emphasis on keeping tire inflated as way to reduce oil consumption:
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “every pound per square inch of tire underinflation wastes 4 million gallons of gas daily in the U.S.” Survey information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that 27% of the cars on the road have a significantly under-inflated tire.
[....]
“So the production offset is more likely to approach 800 thousand barrels per day…”
(bold mine)
The estimate for the amount of oil that can be pumped out of ANWR?
Peak production from ANWR would be 780,000 barrels per day. But that couldn’t be accomplished until 2020…
I believe that increasing CAFE standards and creating public service campaigns to encourage (and make it easy for) people to reduce their oil consumption is exactly the kind of thing the government should be doing right now. Remember — there’s no reason to believe that there is a single simple solution, a magic bullet as it were, to the energy crisis. Conservation plays an important role, research on alternative energy plays an important role, implementation of existing alternative technologies plays an important role.
To think that drilling will make all our problems go away is naive. I agree with Obama that expanded drilling as a small piece of a larger plan should be on the table if that’s what it takes to get one done, but it’s quite striking that something as simple as inflating your tires would likely have a larger and more immediate impact on oil prices than drilling in ANWR.
Related posts:
Nice way to frame the discussion ANWAR output v Tire Pressure. Nice catch
Now if they only could get all those tire pressure machines to actually work at the gas stations…
Exile - not many people believe that additional drilling will make all of our problems go away. Many people do believe that the drilling will help get us across the gap from where we are today to where we need to be.
Elmer, I realize that you don’t claim that and I think that the arguments you make in favor of drilling are reasonable. But it seems to me that Sweetland and Kuhl, in particular, are speaking as if drilling was a magic bullet that would solve all of our energy problems.
I think Randy should frame the argument more like I have. Maybe he could sleep better at night
I agree with you about this.
Sorry guys - I do think Randy is sleeping just fine. but I disagree with the premise
“Many people do believe that the drilling will help get us across the gap from where we are today to where we need to be.”
Need specifics here - Anwar? drop a well today oil comes out when? We have high prices not a shortage of fuel. Two different things.
Basically more drilling postpones the solution. I’m not sure how you can frame it differently.
[...] we can save more oil by properly inflating tires than we can pump out of ANWR. That silly Barack. What is he [...]
Elmer, I don’t know if drilling will get across the gap, but I agree that there’s nothing wrong with a little more drilling in the context of a comprehensive energy plan.
The best position I’ve seen, both as a matter of politics and policy, is Obama’s. He says that we should recognize that the US has 3% of the US oil reserves, which means drilling can only be a small part of the solution, but we still should exploit our domestic reserves responsibly. We can argue about what “responsibly” means, but always in the context of 3%, not in the context of “drilling fixes everything.”
Unfortunately, some in both parties want to get into a stubborn either/or battle on drilling. We should just put it in its rightful place and move on. I think Obama’s done that, and it takes a bit of the wind out of the sails of politicians who want to have a fight over drilling.
To be clear — I don’t agree that drilling will get us across the gap, but the most important point here is to recognize that drilling won’t have any short term effect on gas prices.
While I would love to see lower gas prices, especially because high gas prices are very hard on low income residents, I realize that will not happen. We could have agreed 5 years ago to drill in ANWR and now we would only be 5 years away. I could care less if we stopped drilling today if someone could assure me we will have the energy supplies we need.
Or, if we’d raised CAFE fuel efficiency standards for cars 5 years ago, we’d be 5 years into less dependency, less consumer crunch, and GM wouldn’t be foundering b/c they would’ve been forced to create a more fuel-efficient fleet that would compete with hybrid imports.
[...] to increase supply by drilling in Anwar to solve our problems”, or when he challenges the value of conservation and all the rest of the conservative [...]