Who'da Thunk? US Has More Oil Than the Middle East

Now this is certainly some welcome news. A RAND Corporation report says

WASHINGTON — The United States has an oil reserve at least three times that of Saudi Arabia locked in oil-shale deposits beneath federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, according to a study released yesterday.

But the researchers at the RAND think tank caution the federal government to go carefully, balancing the environmental and economic impacts with development pressure to prevent an oil-shale bust later.

"We've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East," said James Bartis, RAND senior policy researcher and the report's lead author…. [emphasis mine]

For years, the industry and the government considered oil shale — a rock that produces petroleum when heated — too expensive to be a feasible source of oil.

However, oil prices, which spiked above $70 a barrel this week, combined with advances in technology could soon make it possible to tap the estimated 500 billion to 1.1 trillion recoverable barrels

Read it here.

A friend of mine, who teaches Earth Sciences at a major university and had a former career as a petroleum geologist, assured me a few years ago that oil would never become scarce in my or his lifetimes. The reason he gave was that as the price began to rise vast exploitable deposits would begin to be developed. This is one of the many things he was referring to.