US Crude Oil Reserves, Green River Formation, Global Impact Of US Energy In The 21st Century -- IBD -- July 7, 2016

The story that the US has more recoverable reserves than either Russia or Saudi Arabia continues to have "legs." This op-ed" in Investor's Business Daily:

Anu Mittal, GAO director of natural resources and environment, in May 2012 told a stunned Congress that just one U.S. energy region -- the Green River Formation, which stretches across parts of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado -- contained an "amount (of oil) about equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves." With oil prices near $100 a barrel at the time, it was hard to believe.

Dubbed our Persia on the Plains, the Green River Formation is estimated to have four times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, Mittal testified. While the formation's total reserves are 3 trillion barrels, even at the then-high prices for oil, recoverable reserves were about half that: 1.5 trillion barrels.

Now, four years later, oil prices are down more than half -- in part, because global demand is much weaker than expected, but also because the U.S. fracking and petro-technology boom has created nothing less than an energy revolution. Rest assured: While much of the oil that the U.S. has underground is not recoverable under current market conditions, it will be there when we need it.

And it's also important to remember that 72% of the Green River Formation and much of the rest of our country's oil reserves lie under federal lands. So it will take a president and a Congress willing to "drill, baby, drill" to keep us supplied with energy for centuries to come.

As for "peak oil" proponents and their political pals who scared Americans and influenced U.S. energy policy for years with tales of vanishing supplies and soaring energy prices, it's time to buy a new fright mask. This one doesn't work anymore.

I first blogged about the Green River formation on June 7, 2013, and it is linked at the sidebar at the right. At the time:

An ABC News story from last year, with the headline, "An American Oil Find That Holds More Than All Of OPEC":

A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that if half of the oil bound up in the rock of the Green River Formation could be recovered it would be "equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves."

Both the GAO and private industry estimate the amount of oil recoverable to be 3 trillion barrels.

I added at the time:

It is nice to see the "three trillion original oil in place." It gives "credibility" to reports that the Bakken could be a trillion-bbl-OOIP-reservoir.

Over at "Big Stories," I have a number of stories on the US energy revolution. I still maintain that the biggest economic story for the 21st century will be US energy. I've said that for quite some time.