Is Crude Oil Vital for Our Economy? Howard Lowe Professional Engineer / Geologist January 20, 2022 The average US citizen considers crude oil vital for transportation and does not realize that large amount of this production is used for feedstock in the petrochemical industry. US total crude oil and natural gas liquid production as of December 30, 2021, was 13.4 million barrels per day. About 15% of the 13.4 million barrels becomes feedstock for the petrochemical industry. Americans should be concerned about energy supplies, as well as the amount of crude oil and natural gas liquids available for manufacture of everyday products vital to maintaining our standard of living. America’s proven oil reserves (38.2 billion barrels) are minuscule when compared Venezuela (297 billion barrels), Saudi Arabia (268 billion barrels) and Canada (173 billion barrels). In short, our ability to maintain high production rates is temporary at best. Example: 3,500 wells in Saudi Arabia can produce 12 million barrels of oil per day. We produce oil from over 600,000 wells to obtain 11.5 million barrels of crude oil. Why has our oil production and oil imports from Canada dropped precipitously in less than one year? I will try to give a short and informative simple answer for a very complex question: •
Keystone XL Pipeline cancelled. The Keystone’s capacity - 1.1 million BOPD (barrels of oil per day) of Canadian tar sands crude and light crude from the Williston Basin (mainly North Dakota Bakken oil).
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Close all Federal lands to new oil and gas leasing.
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Close the Alaskan Arctic leases for further exploration and development.
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Shutdown hydraulic fracking.
Modern societies would find it extremely difficult to survive without petroleum-based products. What are these products? Did you realize there are over 5,000 of them? The table below gives a partial list of some of the all-important products that originate from petroleum.
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