Over at the Washington Post, Glenn ("The Fact Checker") Kessler continues his crusade for truthiness. Today Glenn is desperately splitting hairs looking for a way to ding Obama for pointing out that America uses 20% of the world's oil but only has 2% of the world's proven reserves.
Kessler concedes that Obama's statement is technically "true" in the sense that it's true and based on solid facts. However Kessler then goes on to say that "proven reserves" are a moving target, and that they expand as new oil deposits are found and new recovery technologies are developed, and he takes the "cornucopean" view that supplies will just keep expanding.
He's saying basically that consumption and reserves are not related, so Obama is dishonestly comparing apples and oranges. Really? We just assume that there is a relation between usage and reserves, and that nothing valuable is in infinite supply. I mean that's just basic comedy.
...Unless of course you believe that there is unlimited supply just waiting to be found.
And that's Kessler's point, that someday our supply of oil might expand and then in that alternate universe, Obama's statement will be false. Kessler does not give Obama a single Pinnochio but instead says:
For the moment, we will label the president’s statement with our rarely used category: TRUE BUT FALSE
Whaaaa?
Keesler's geyser of nonsense conceals a few facts of his own:
First, America's crude oil production has dropped 50% since 1970, declining steadily except for nice bump in the 1980s from the North Slope and tiny upward blip from fracking since 2009.
http://www.eia.gov/...
But to hear Kessler, the reader would think that America's oil production has always grown steadily. And Kessler seems to think that we are still in the days when people brought in geyers by drilling only a couple feet deep or maybe shooting a gun into the ground.
Kessler's criticism of Obama rest on the belief that "unconventional oil" like oil shale will be upgraded to "proven reserves." Kessler and the cornucopeans ("cornies") love the oil shale or tar sands, and Newt even contends that there is some alchemy that will turn it into $2.50 gas.
FWIW, gas cost the equivalent of $2 a gallon in 1970, before the oil crisis.
http://zfacts.com/...
So getting a price of $2.50 would require very cheap oil by historic standards.
Kessler doesn't mention Newt. The press loves Newt bellowing about $2.50 gas, but does anyone believe that? Hardly any voters, apparently. They like to whoop for that line, but clearly they do not believe it.
Actually it is going to cost well over $100 a barrel to recover unconventional oil. Getting out the oil requires digging up the land, then oil sands must be boiled with hot water and oil shale needs to roasted at 650 degrees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Nobody has ever done this with oil shale on a commercial scale. And this is what a hallucinating Rick Santorum called "the best oil."
Even in Canada, the "good" tar sands are about gone, and now they are into the really nasty insoluable muck that will need a lot more treatment.
Nobody is talking about how much of the US will have be destroyed in pursuit of these deposits. So far the only way to get much of this stuff is by strip mining, and DOE should be drawing up maps showing how much of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah will be destroyed outright, and how much will be left permanently without water.
The other thing that is always missing from discussions of oil is the "Law Of Supply And Demand." Yes Glenn, there will be more oil at $200 a barrel, $300 a barrel, and $400 a barrel. But who will be able to afford it?
And the price of oil nearly doubled when the Iran-Iraq war started, but nobody on the right seems concerned about Romney's planned attack on Iran.
If you can stomach Jon Stossel, here he is in 2008 on 20/20 gloating that we have unlimited amounts of oil to last for centuries. He even says how much more expensive it will be to recover oil from sand and shale.
But that's not Exxon's problem, because they will pass the costs onto you.