astalavista_b wrote:U.S. oil reserves did not change since 1980's. Check the statistical Statistical Review of World Energy at Bp website. Since 1980s U.S has left oil for 8-10 years. However 30 years already passed , current reserves still shows that U.S is going to have 0 barrels of oil within current production statistics at 2020. I don't think that is true. I guess U.S has enough oil reserves for at least 50 years with current oil prices above $100. Think about north Dakota, offshore reserves, production is rising day by day within the new technological improvements. Besides about 50-100 billion barrels of oil will be converted to conventional if oil prices will be at least $120-130. Thus higher oil prices will make U.S more independent from OPEC.
I think you had better check some independent sources (clue: not from a major oil company or the Saudis). A decent quantitative assessment of the world's oil use can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil.
Here's a quick summary.
1) The world uses 30 billion barrels of oil a year, more or less.
2) The USA uses about 8 to 9 billion barrels of that, depending on what sort of year we're having.
3) The proven reserves of conventional oil in the USA total about 21 billion barrels or about 2 and a third years at current consumption rates.
4) We might be able to double, or even triple that amount with new technologies and drilling, but not much more.
So being optimistic, we might have 6- years of energy independence based on proven reserves if the rest of the world said "No oil for you!" With conservation, Canadian tar, natural gas and some luck, we might go for 10, or even 20 years independently if we
really conserved. After that, we're done with oil as an energy source, and with our current civilization. After enough people starved, we might stabilize a bit.
It might go this way in a 20 year time-frame anyway. Given the realities of politics worldwide, there'll be a lot of sudden "resource nationalism" also known as "hoarding" as countries like Russia and Saudi keep their remaining oil for their own consumption. Expect the world's oil supply to drop in large sudden steps, not because there isn't oil, but because the elites and militaries of the world will try and grab what's left while the grabbing is good.
You and I, will walk.