Abstract
The U.S. currently uses about six billion barrels of oil per year (or 15 million barrels per day), but it produces only 3 billion barrels. Before World War II, the U.S. supplied approximately 70 percent of the world’s oil, but now supplies 15 percent while using 30 percent. If the U.S. relied solely on its proven reserves of about 40 billion barrels, domestic oil would be gone at current consumption rates in about seven years.
In 1885 the U.S. Geological Survey indicated there was little or no chance of finding oil in California and in 1891 this was expanded to include Kansas and Texas. The maximum future supply of U.S. oil was envisioned to be 22.5 billion barrels in 1908, and in 1928 the United States had oil supplies for only 13 years at then-current consumption rates. By 1949 the end of the U.S. oil supply was almost in sight.
Herman Kahn et al. The Next 200 Years: A Scenario for America and the World (1976)
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© 1981 Plenum Press, New York
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Gibbons, J.H., Chandler, W.U. (1981). Liquids and Gases, The Crux of the Matter. In: Energy. Modern Perspectives in Energy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9209-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9209-9_5
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