Benefits of Domestic Oil

According to a Human Events post on 9/11/08, 23.5 million acres of federal property (land and water), which is 25.6% of the 91.5 million federal acres currently under lease, is producing 1.6 million BOPD. If this is so, then statistically speaking could we not extrapolate production to 42.9 million BOPD if all 2,460 million acres of federal property was under lease (1.6 million BOPD * 2,460 acres / 91.5 acres)? This extrapolated production rate of 42.9 million BOPD is more than half of the average May 2008 through February 2009 global production rate of 73.3 million BOPD per the June 2009 issue of JPT.

I realize that this is a very optimistic extrapolation, one that you might expect from a government bureaucracy trying to sell some new program. I would be skeptical of someone who told me that ALL federal property has economic reserves under it. However, the U.S.A. produces a total of about 5 million BOPD, which is about 1/3 of total consumption. Wouldn't we then only need another 10-15 million BOPD to be self-sufficient? Is it asking too much to believe that all federal property would yield this much, a 1/4 to a 1/3 of my extrapolated figure?

Wouldn't it be nice to create and keep jobs here and boost our economy? "Big Oil" might move back home if allowed to explore here.

Wouldn't it be nice to be a net EXPORTER of oil for a change? OPEC might be at our mercy. At least terrorists would no longer be funded by the U.S. How much would our Middle East foreign policy change if we were energy self-sufficient?

Wouldn't it be nice to flood our treasury with all of the resulting lease payments and production and severance tax revenue that responsible elected officials could use to pay down the national debt and shore up the "ticking time bombs" of social security, medicare, medicaid, etc.? I realize that requires quite a bit of faith.

Of course this will not happen overnight, but it will never happen if the other 96.3% of federal property is never leased out.