To the Editor:
I have heard lately we use 20 percent of the world’s oil, but only have two percent of the world’s oil reserves. The claim makes it appear the U.S. is an oil barren nation dependent on foreign oil and we must develop alternative sources like algae.

Can you believe the U.S is awash in oil? President Obama said we have 22.3 billion barrels of proved reserves, a little less than two percent of the worlds proved resources. What was not said? We have 400 billion barrels of “proved” reserves, 800 billion barrels of oil shale, which the Rand Corporation says is more than triple the known reserves in Saudi Arabia, and 2,303 billion barrels of “undiscovered resources.”

When you include oil shale, the U.S. has 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil, according to the Institute for Energy Research; enough to meet all of the U.S. oil needs for about the next 200 years without any imports.

“This is not a geological problem, it’s a political problem,” says Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research. “We’ve embargoed our own supplies.”

Randy Miller
Carrollton, OH 

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