Como se ve a continuación, la razón no es producir independencia energética, sino generar impuestos que mitiguen el enorme déficit público americano.
The administration is trying to deflect criticism from environmentalists by pointing out that the decision should help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, create thousands of high-paying jobs and generate much-needed tax revenue. But Mr. Obama is being careful not to offer any specifics, and for good reason: estimating undiscovered resources in areas with little previous drilling is as much art as science; even the most optimistic projections concede that the amount of petroleum we’re talking about here is relatively minor; and while some jobs may be created fairly quickly, profits (and tax revenues) are going to come slowly.
The best estimates of the federal Mineral Management Service suggest that the three new drilling areas combined have 4.5 billion to 22 billion barrels of potential oil, and 13 trillion to 95 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Considering that our current total estimated domestic reserves are 20 billion barrels of oil and 250 trillion cubic feet of gas, this sounds significant.
But this estimate of potential resources is misleading in a number of ways. Most important, the term “potential resources” refers to the amount likely to be discovered over a very long time, while our current reserves are those that have already been found but not yet tapped.
A more meaningful yardstick of potential in the new areas is the estimated undiscovered petroleum in all our domestic offshore areas, which amount to 40 billion barrels of oil and 200 trillion cubic feet of gas. And, unfortunately, there is always a possibility that little or no oil or gas will be found in the new sites, especially off the East Coast, where past exploration has been confined to a few unsuccessful wells decades ago.
But, as Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead. Production half a century from now is not very relevant to either politicians or policy makers. To think of near-term production levels and timing, we might want to consider the North Slope of Alaska, where drilling began in the 1960s; it contains the Prudhoe Bay field, which was found to have oil in 1968.
With estimated resources of about 25 billion barrels, this area looked like an answer to our prayers. Yet, between the inherent difficulty in extracting petroleum and opposition from environmentalists, serious production did not begin until the completion of the trans-Alaska pipeline in 1977, ramping up over a couple of years before falling to the current modest production of a bit less than 700,000 barrels a day.
If this history is any guide, we might get production of as much as one million barrels a day of oil from these newly released areas, but only after 10 to 15 years of effort. Clearly, the petroleum from the new areas isn’t going to offset our 12 million barrels a day of imports, and the tax revenues aren’t going to put a huge dent in a budget deficit in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Still, the plan makes a contribution on both fronts, and one that is almost pain-free.
Voy navegando. Y la información que encuentro me causa sensaciones que luego trato de "cocinar" en post más elaborados, en mi blog ("El Blog de José Luis Castillo"; vaya nombre con poca sustancia, no?). O en Google Plus. O en Twitter. O en Facebook. O...
