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Oil Deposit Could Increase US Reserves 10x
HighWizard notes the upcoming release, on Thursday, of a report by the US Geological Survey on the Bakken Formation. This is an oil field covering 200,000 square miles and underlying parts of North and South Dakota, Montana, and Saskatchewan. A geologist who began surveying the field, before dying in 2000, believed it may hold as much as 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Later estimates have ranged to the hundreds of billions of barrels. Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy independence.
Awesome! ...And in the nick of time too, the dealer just called and my brand new 6000SUX just came in!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FLMVNyYb1SE
I wonder what this does for theories of for oil. Some people theorize that petroleum is left over from the formation of the earth, rather than created by the fossilization of carbon life forms.
This reserve may be difficult to tap fully because of the nature of the rocks. I wonder if nuclear weapons would help. I guess it depends on how and where they were deployed.
How many tons of CO2 would be created with the burning of 500 billion barrels of oil? BTW, 500 billion barrels of oil would be about 1/6th of the world's oil reserves.
Is there really that much oxygen in the atmoshpere to burn all that? Let's see. The earth's atmosphere weighs 5 quadrillion metric tons... OK, no worries there.
but, but, the global warmings! The sea level could rise 50 feet in the next century. [checks current elevation of homestead] OK, that's fine.
But it would be hot! [checks average temps for homestead] ok, yeah, I can get behind that.
What about the polar bears? [checks polar bear shares in 401K] We're looking good!
But the crops! The crops won't grow! [Checks map of world showing land in permafrost] Looks like a net gain to me.
Ok, yeah! We have more oil! Can we exploit it faster than we have more people?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Too bad oil is fungible, so OPEC can still hurt us monetarily.
So, how far back does this push "peak oil"?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
I wouldn't. Even with that much oil it still is going to run out someday. If anything we should leave it alone for now to ensure that we don't end up with massive shortages as we transition to alternative fuel sources.
Even if the field is as productive as the summary makes it sound, it should be treated as a reprieve, not as an absolute solution.
Giant shale fields still make for expensive recovery costs. And will this make make large expanses of the Dakotas like the strip mines of West Virginia?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
There is already production happening, so go ahead and take a nice long deep breath now...
TFA says it's a shale deposit. We've known for decades that there's more oil in tar sands and shales in North America than there is in the Saudi fields, but there's the small detail of how much it costs to extract it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You're using her as bait, Master!
Dear Canada,
Concerning this oilfield which lays below the Dakotas and Saskatchewan: if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's a straw, you see? You watching? And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake... I... drink... your... milkshake! SLURP I drink it up!
Bludgeonly yours,
the USA
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We got to finish off the Arab oil first, to reduce their political influence in the world.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Last I heard -- a long, long time ago -- extraction of shale oil deposits required abundant water, as the technology then used steam to liquify the oil and release it from the shale.
Last I heard, there was not abundant water in the area of the deposits. If a /. reader with recent expertise in the extraction of oil from shale would post a reply on the most recent technologies and the free or cheap water requirement, I would be, as they say in the Western Movies, "beholden."
Otherwise, like those in California's Central Valley, the extent and practical worth of such deposits is debatable.
Of course, we can hope.
Hold up there, buddy. I didn't say it was anything. I just said it had nothing to do with ecology. Not that it's a good thing, though. It comes from a line of thinking that doesn't really take an ecological perspective on things...which probably isn't good. The term just reflects a point of view. You could use a more precise term like "sustainable energy independence", then we could all hold hands and dance and sing around the Maypole.
About $50 per barrel - a little higher than oil from Albertan tar sands, which is about $40 per barrel. Considering that the price is $100 per barrel, there are tremendous profits here. The price of oil is so high, that even the South African oil from coal project at about $60 per barrel, is immensely profitable.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Two words: Roseanne Barr.
Absolutely nothing!
I'm simply questioning how a country can be "independent," in an energy respect or otherwise, when the world literally can't be lived upon. Finding a mass reserve will do nothing but encourage Americans to burn oil even more wantonly -- this would seem to be a form of independence, up until the very last second, when what is left of humanity murder each other in a primal, animalistic rage for scarce remaining resources.
This is inaccurate:
"Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy independence."
This is correct:
"Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy dependency on oil."
... Canada has just begun to beef up the military defenses on its long southern border.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The region has sufficient water to deal with this issue. There are challenges here but his is not one of them.
There is also enough geothermal energy here that we don't even need the petroleum if we could convert and store it properly.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Energy Independence is completely separate from clean energy. Energy Independence means that the Middle East doesn't have the power to stop our economy instantly. Clean energy means energy that is less pollutant. The two are often used together because the adoption of clean energy brings energy independence (since most clean energy solutions can be implemented in the US). Thus clean energy implies energy independence, but not vice-versa.
It has been known for decades that there is a tremendous amount of oil shale and tar sands in this area. The challenge, and it is a significant challenge, is to extract the oil from these deposits in a way that isn't an environmental catastrophe of epic proportions. As is often the case, the wikipedia article is a great introduction to the topic.
Extracting oil from oil shale in the most obvious way involves heating it (probably with oil, but you do get more out than you put in, usually). So, you scoop it out of the massive open-pit mine, heat it, get the oil out, and then dispose of the remaining rock. Paradoxically, you end up changing the nature of the rock, so that it takes up more space than it originally did -- so even if you put all the tailings back into where it was mined, you'd end up with a new set of mountains. The net energy you end up with after processing the oil shale isn't a lot, and ridiculous amounts of water are necessary in the process (water the mountain west just doesn't have.)
It should be noted that the Canadians are talking about building nuclear plants in their tar sands regions to supply the energy necessary to liberate the oil from the tar sands, in sort of a nuclear->oil scheme.
According to the Wikipedia article, there have been oil shale processing programs in the past, some on a fairly large scale. They have fallen by the wayside as conventional oil has been so inexpensive.
I believe that the environmental impact of extracting oil from oil shale on the scale required to keep the world running on oil as it is today would have a devastating environmental impact. Probably not as bad as a nuclear war fought over the remaining conventional oil resources...probably.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I don't disagree that oil should be on the way out, but at the moment we still need and use it, and due to the current political issues with oil, I'd much rather be depleting a cheap domestic supply than the alternative. If we don't use this one, we'll simply use another one. The way I see it we should drill there and get the oil, but still focus on the development of alternate fuels. Hopefully, by the time this supply's running low, there will be a viable substitute. Then again, if oil's cheap it might take some of the pressure off alternate fuel research, but I'd hope people aren't that short-sighted.
Why do people always discuss National Energy Independence, when the oil is just going to be harvested by a multinational energy corporation and sold at whatever the market will bear?
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
The current reservoir rock at the North Pole was not actually located at the North Pole when it formed millions of years ago. See plate tectonics.
Current prices have nothing to do with supply or demand issues and everything to do with (1) the crappy value of the US dollar, (2) the ongoing instability in/around Iraq, (3) ongoing violence and instability in Nigeria and (4) Hugo Chavez's ongoing nationalization of industries while threatening to stop oil exports to the USA.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Yeah, all the SUVs being replaced with Priuses are just a figment of a diseased mind.
Not a typewriter
We're talking geologic time here, long enough for continental drift to have totally reshaped the face of the earth. The parts of the North American and Eurasian plates under the Arctic Ocean where oil and gas can be found weren't always at the pole.
A lot of people question the wisdom of continuing the oil economy, there just aren't a lot of clear cut answers. There are a lot of possibilities, and a lot of people are working hard to make those possibilities a reality, but at the moment nothing is really ready to take oil's (and for that matter coal's) place in our energy production on a large enough scale.
Unless, of course, our usage keeps going up (as recently as 1990, it was around 6 billion barrels per year).
All in all, it would be optimistic to assume we'd get a decade out of each 100 billion barrels we get to the surface. A decade is a long time, but I wouldn't call it "energy independence." I could easily live long enough to see these reserves disappear, even if we do have 500 billion barrels, and my kids certainly will.
True independence will need something renewable.
Oil demand in the US is pretty inelastic in the short term. This means that people will pay whatever they have to keep the heat running in their homes or to drive to work/school. If oil prices rise 50%, demand might fall 5% or 10% (as people lower the thermostat or skip driving to the gym).
As a result, if oil supply dropped by even 25% (as it did during the Yom Kippur War embargo in 1973), it would take drastic measures to reduce consumption by 25%. Like shutting factories, gas rationing at the pumps, closing schools in the winter, massive inflation (as transportation costs skyrocket), all kinds of bad stuff. In the long term, people buy more efficient cars or heat-proof their houses, but in the short term, only the most painful of measures can reduce consumption.
National Energy Independence means avoiding this. If multinational corporations threatened to reduce US oil output by 25% if their demands weren't met, we'd have troops nationalizing the oil fields within 72 hours.
One of the more intriguing ideas I've heard is to seed the deep ocean with iron.
Iron is a limiting factor in the growth of plankton, especially in the resource poor areas of the ocean.
Add iron, plankton grows. Plankton absorbs CO2, then dies, sinking.
And in China they say "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
So it takes decades to convert our society to renewable energy. That means we start TODAY. In earnest.
The conversion of America to alternative, clean, renewable energy (and not the Ethanol Scam) is an engineering and collective will issue, not a scientific issue.
If I were President, my plan would be to take a manual transmission approach to the issue.
Here's how my "Manhattan Project" would go:
Gear 1 - the quick, short term stuff. Corporate tax breaks and subsidies for electric car production. Electric cars have existed - even electric SUV's (the old RAV-4, anyone? Don't tell me I'm wrong, I NOW HAVE ONE - they're just not being made anymore).
Tax breaks and rebates for solar energy panels on houses and apartments. BIG breaks and rebates, proportional to the kilowatt/hour rating of the installed system. We fund this tax break by stimulating the economy - solar energy purchases and then the resulting rise in consumer spending as energy prices decrease ESPECIALLY DURING THE BOILING HOT SUMMER.
Start funding and constructing pebble bed nuclear power plants. Go bare knuckle with the environmentalists. James Lovelock, the founder of the Gaia Theory, supports this as an intermediate step towards cleaner, more renewable energy in the future. This should take 20-30 years to realize the benefits. Best to start now.
Gear 2 - Incentives for solar powered electric chargers for gas stations to power up electric cars. Make use of the existing infrastructure to change the infrastructure.
Start construction on a 500 sq mile solar farm in a sunny, remote location. Or break up said solar farm into several sunny locations around the country. This is enough power for the entire world during the day.
Slowly phase out coal power plants when exceeded by its solar cousins, but leave enough to take care of night time/bad weather issues.
Government contracts to research higher miles-per-charge for cars.
Gear 3 - A nationwide "give back to the power grid" incentive for homes. Basically, people who generate solar power on their rooftops while they are at work and nothing's going on in their house, profit when they're using no power and their solar panels are pumping energy back into the grid. They get 100% MARKET VALUE for that energy - exactly 1 for 1 versus what they would pay if they used it. Adjusted daily, weekly or monthly, however it goes.
Bigger Government contracts to research higher miles-per-charge for cars. Performance based. Now we start pushing for conversions of the big haulers (big rigs), as well as pushing them to bio diesel with emphasis on converting used veggie oil, etc.
Gear 4 - the first pebble bed nuclear plants go online. Drastic "as immediate as possible" cutbacks in coal and oil powered plants but not enough to completely offset the new nuclear plants.
More Government contracts to research higher miles-per-charge for electric and biodiesel-powered big rigs. Performance based.
Gear 5 - shutdown of all remaining polluting (Coal/Oil) power plants as all planned nuclear reactors go online and the solar farms are up, and over 50% of all US homes are solar powered.
Hopefully at this point we won't need Government contracts for high miles-per-charge cars; the market should reach critical mass. Research for electric and biodiesel powered big rigs continues until every new rig produced runs on one or the other.
Manhattan project complete. The big mushroom cloud you see is the giant earth-shattering KABOOM that is OPEC corporate heads exploding along with their profits.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Synopsis: the perimeter around a plot of "oil shale land" is deep drilled, the holes are filled with water, and then frozen, to form a vertical ice dam surrounding the plot.
The center area is also drilled, and the deep rock there is then heated over the course of a year or two. At some point the hydrocarbons literally boil up to the surface and can be recovered (the land is drilled, but not mined). The ice dam keeps the hydrocarbons from contaminating the ground water.
Shell has been working on this for a while, and I believe they have now proven this technology on a test plot or two located on the oil shale lands in western Colorado. At some point the cost of "pumped oil" will rise high enough that this option then becomes competitive on even on a small scale. After that, it should take off as the economies of scale increasingly kick in.
This article suggests it might already be commercially viable (at a price of $30/barrel):
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_4051709,00.html
The US should be in the catbird seat if it works--I believe the worlds largest deposits of oil shale lie entirely within US borders. We'll benefit the most too by making a general shift over to diesel engines (rather than gasoline engines), because of the nature of those oil shale hydrocarbons, but I don't see that as much of an issue. People are still buying new cars as their old ones wear out.
There really is incredible amounts of energy wastage we can target first with nothing but behavioural issues and political stubbonness in the way. Airconditioning, transport and lighting are handled in very inefficient ways in a lot of situations and there are many industrial situations optimised for energy pricing that has very little to do with actual energy usage. In a lot of cases there is no incentive at all to use less energy when the sane situation would be to give those that cut their usage a discount. Where the climate change argument got weird and partisan political was when economic penalties and the prospect of a new artificial market to make money in appeared. There is also an overemphasis on penalties which is just making enemies of those that could be using less (but don't use less because they get no saving at all on their energy bills) and just stretches out the time before any action is taken by a few more years. We need to avoid what is really fairytale bullshit from many (not the above poster but often economists) and get back to the idea of actually doing what we can to burn less stuff instead. We're seeing things like traffic lights getting replaced by an array of LED's, streetlights with reflectors so that lower power bulbs do the same job and other measures that cut power consumption in places where the power bill for a city is actually lower if they use less electricity - and no effort at all in places that just face the threat of some sort of carbon tax in the future. To get large savings we need large organisations to make major efforts. It costs a lot to put in a railway line between two areas that a lot of people want to move between but it cuts down the daily energy use by a large amount.
B) This is about oil reserves INSIDE THE UNITED STATES
Actually, the Bakken formation extends into Canada, too.
The Bakken has a rather interesting history. Estimates on how much oil it produced have varied a lot. Back in the '70s, they thought it only had about 10B barrels -- which is a lot, but not when it's spread out over such a huge formation. To make matters worse, the formation is a dozen meters or so thick in most places. All together, recovery rates were expected to be 1-3%, and expensive at that. Not many takers.
Things have changed. After Price's paper that predicted over 400 billion barrels, computer simulations have been developed; the latest runs expect 200-300 billion barrels. Furthermore, horizontal drilling means that you can enter the thin formation and then run along it; this is what is used in the very successful Elm Coulee field.
The Bakken is just one minimally tapped deposit. There's absolutely no shortage of recoverable oil in the world. The problem is the consequences of recovering and burning it all.
C) The US is moving to 'alternative fuels'. The debate is not over whether or not to, but how big a priority it is.
Are you kidding? There's a huge debate over whether or not to, especially after the most recent papers suggesting that even sugarcane ethanol leads to more greenhouse gasses than gasoline. Let alone the fact that there's a widely growing acceptance that, despite the momentum, corn ethanol is a huge blunder. There's the food-for-fuel competition (food prices are up 40%, mostly from fuel prices and alternative fuel pressure). Now, I think it's good that corn prices aren't as artificially low as they used to be, but now they're artificially high, and everything is getting pushed up by the increased demand for biofuel land -- even other staples like wheat.
And what about cellulosic ethanol, this supposed panacea? This is one thing that drives me crazy. Look at how most big cellulosic ethanol companies are making the stuff. They turn the biomass into syngas (CO+H2) by burning it in a poorly oxygenated environment, and then use a complex, inefficient biological or catalytic process to convert it into ethanol. Well, here's the thing: we've been making syngas into *gasoline* for most of a century. That's how Nazi Germany and Apartheid-era South Africa kept their engines running (excepting, in the case of Germany, after we bombed most of their facilities). And it's a relatively efficient -- 70% or so. So, instead of making a fuel that we're *already set up for*, we're instead making a *less dense* fuel that we can only use in *limited quantities* in most cars and *can't ship in our pipelines*. Why? Because "cellulosic gasoline" isn't a buzzword. Nobody likes the word "gasoline", but lots of people like the word "ethanol". You get more investment, you get more tax breaks, and on and on. So the inferior solution gets chosen.
Anyways, if you want to *actually* clean up your act, either increase your MPG or switch your miles over to electricity (the significantly higher thermodynamic efficiencies of power plants mean that even dirty power plants run a car cleaner than a gasoline engine -- plus, electricity is a lot easier to clean up). Biofuels are an "easy" solution that isn't really a solution at all.
But this Rottweiler not only is snarling and frothing at the mouth; it also went to Harvard.
Are ye daft?!? South Dakota is viking territory, not even a cooperative force of pirates and ninjas could take it. Even the hicks of wyoming fear a raid of viking longtrucks comming down I-90.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Well of course we should use it.
We're going to need every drop of it to invade all the other oil producing nations so we'll have even more oil. All sarcasm aside, this is a really going to be a set back to the American economy in the long run.
While we are spending our time and money pulling oil out of the ground we are not going to be making any effort to develop alternatives, while the rest of the world (except China) is actually going to work on developing alternative energies.
At some point we need to address the question of whether it's more important to lower the price of gas at the pump or take measures to develop more sustainable alternatives while we still have some oil to fall back onto. Alternatives to oil are not limited to the fuel pump, but all applications of oil. And plastic is going to be a hard one to replace.
1) Get a drinking straw.
2) Go to a pool.
3) Start sucking the water out of the pool as fast as you can with that straw. (You probably should not swallow the water)
4) Go to the ocean.
5) Start sucking the water out of the ocean as fast as you can with the same straw. (You definitely should not swallow the water)
6) Now explain to us all how the amount of water that you sucked through the straw was dictated by reserve you are pulling from. Or try this experiment:
1) Get a drinking straw.
2) Get a really big sponge really soaking wet.
3) Start sucking the water out of the sponge as fast as you can with that straw.
4) If you start getting less water, try a different spot on the sponge.
5) Marvel at how thought experiments can prove anything you want if they are divorced enough from the phenomenon of interest, but note that mine is probably closer to the reality of oil extraction than yours is.
How exactly does oil in Saskatchewan increase US reserves?
... which means giving up our tasty tasty oil. You don't think we'll let you have cheap oil in any re-negotiated NAFTA do you?
Last I checked, you americans were talking about shredding NAFTA
What will it be? Cheap oil from your northern friends, or will you finally retrain the people who's manufacturing jobs went to Mexico and stop blaming Canada for it?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=7534c4de-0c21-4653-a06b-112bc96b2708&k=6345
And it looks like some ppl may have a way to get at it now.
400 billion barrels to be exact.
http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Discoverer_Enterprise-141.html
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I fully understand that you can and we should shift away from fossil fuels as fast as possible and I strongly agree with all of your notes. However, I wouldn't restrict to just pebble bed reactors as a number of other reactors are passively safe and even just standard issue WPR are quite safe and quite effective. However, my main objection is that it just might be too little too late. I think there needs to be another Gear to research and implement some way to remove the heat-trapping pollution already in the atmosphere. Even if we stop as fast as you suggest we're still going to have 400 PPM of CO2 and it's still going to wreck havoc.
Also, for the solar power plant we need to make a lot more solar cell plants probably with the ability to mass produce like that printing solar panel tech which has started to kick into high gear.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Nope. Plankton dies, releasing organo-phophates and nitrogen compounds into the water, which causes bacterial blooms, which depletes dissolved O2 levels, which causes other marine lifeforms to die, initiating a downward spiral...
Not a marine biologist, but a marine aquarium owner. Been there, done that.
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
what, with all the haliburon stock those guys have.
I would add that any discussion on oil prices that does not account for inflation due to our depressed currency (US) is pointless.
I live in Ohio, a land of extremist motoring.
On the upside, there is no property tax on motor vehicles, and insurance is relatively cheap. Fuel prices are below the national average. Hell, the supermarket sells discounted gasoline if you eat enough. Thank goodness my kids are little eating machines. Every so often, I can fill my BMW with premium for free.
On the downside, there is hyperactive speed enforcement, low speed limits, and the ultimate speed enforcer -- poorly maintained roads.
This place was made for Hummers and I see quite a few on the road every day. If anyone offers an SUV larger than Godzilla, we will set it first in Ohio.
I Drink Your MILKSHAKE! I Drink It Up!
At some point we need to address the question of whether it's more important to lower the price of gas at the pump or take measures to develop more sustainable alternatives while we still have some oil to fall back onto. Alternatives to oil are not limited to the fuel pump, but all applications of oil. And plastic is going to be a hard one to replace.
The thing most people don't understand is that oil reservoirs deplete. As you pull oil out of the rock it decreases the pressure and decreases the amount you're able to pull out in the future. It's not just an issue of lowering the price at the pump. You have to work constantly just to keep the price at the pump where it is, and that's if demand is just steady. If we stop developing new reserves before we have a viable alternative to take its place, this $100/bbl we pay now is going to look like a drop in the bucket. And if energy starts getting too expensive there are some pretty dire consequences, like people not being able to afford turning on their heaters in the winter or people not being able to work because they can't afford transportation.I'm talking about commodities... take a look. And if you think the fact that a the value of a dollar is now about .6 Euros, while oil is priced in dollars, does not affect what we are paying, I have some beautful beachfront property in Nogales, Arizona that you may be interested in.
If we were going to war for iraqs oil we would not be paying over $3 per gallon at the pump today.
We did that here in colorado back in late 50's or early 60's. Turned out that residual radiation contaminated the oil.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We're talking midwest, not northeast. Trust me, there will be no trouble getting oil from there. This is "Flyover country" not "undisturbed wilderness" The buffalo have been long domesticated, and the native grass grows so fast that it has to be burned off each year to prevent REAL prarie fires. No real disruption of anything. I doubt it will be any more dificult than doing oil exploration in Oklahoma, and the Native Americans don't seem to have any issues with exploitation of the petrolium resources there. Now, getting the refineries built to deal with our new found wealth, that could be a problem, but just getting it, not so much.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
According to this cute chart:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/whats_in_barrel_oil.html
A little more than 50% of a barrel of oil becomes gasoline.
And this little tidbit from the plastics industry:
Less than
oil goes into making all the plastic bags used in the US while 93% - 95% of every barrel of
crude oil is burned for fuel and heating purposes. Although they are made from natural gas or
oil, plastic bags actually consume less fossil fuels during their lifetime than do compostable
plastic and paper bags.
http://www.plasticsindustry.org/about/fbf/myths+facts_grocerybags.pdf
--
Seriously, how many pounds of plastic bags could you possibly be using in a year? How many pounds of plastic on in your car? A weekly 15 gallon fill-up is about 90 pounds of fuel, or a little less than 2.5 tons a year. My whole car doesn't weight that much, and most of it is steel.
Save your bags if it makes you feel good, but it ain't gonna make any real difference.
It's increasingly pissing me off the degree of naivete that everybody approaches the oil situation these days. Oooh, 1 billion barrels, that's a WHOLE LOT, right? Yeah, might want to consider that the U.S. alone uses over 20 million barrels a day. That's a whole whopping 50 days out of that one billion barrels. Tell me again about this energy independence nonsense? Not as long as we're depending on crude oil for it friends. Even assuming that's a HUNDRED billion barrels in there that can actually be extracted (and I'm going to say I kinda doubt it), that's a bit over ten years at current rates of consumption, less if you consider growth. Still not even approaching anything resembling meaningful independence.