Table 6 

 SOME ESTIMATES OF TOTAL DOMESTIC CRUDE OIL RESOURCES 



(in billions of barrels) 



Source: V. E. McKelvey, Contradictions in Energy Resource Estimates, Seventh Biennial Gas Dynamics 

 Symposium (Northwestern Univ. preprint, 1967). 



Provec) reserves, plus possible additional by conventional secondary recovery techniques. 



Possible reserves available to conventional, but uneconomic secondary recovery, plus possible reserves from techniques 



not perfected. 



range is great; estimates of ultimate total produc- 

 tion in the United States, for example, range from 

 less than 200 to more than 400 billion barrels of 

 petroleum. It is not possible to attribute the share 

 of these estimated prospective or speculative re- 

 serves to onshore or offshore areas. 



Estimates of domestic natural gas reserves are 

 more difficult to make and consequently are fewer 

 in number. McKelvey* evaluates two estimates of 

 ultimate gas production, each about 1 ,800 trilUon 

 cubic feet. 



There is no scarcity of foreign oil to supple- 

 ment domestic production, but the historic policy 

 of the United States has been that it cannot afford 

 to become excessively dependent in the short term 

 on foreign oil imports. 



An indication of the future supply problem 

 confronting the United States is that if we 

 consume 83 bilUon barrels of petroleum between 

 now and 1980, as projected, this would amount to 

 an average of more than 5.5 biUion barrels per 

 year. By contrast, the largest addition to U.S. 

 reserves was 4.4 billion barrels in 1959, and the 

 average for the past eight years has been 3.5 billion 



"Ibid., p. 21. 



barrels annually. Also needed will be 450 trillion 

 cubic feet (tcf) of gas, or an average of 30 tcf per 

 year. Industry has never added more than 25 tcf of 

 reserves in any year and the average over the last 

 two years was 21 tcf. 



While proved reserves have grown over the last 

 20 years from about 21 to 31 billion barrels, 

 production has also grovm from 1.7 to 3.5 billion 

 barrels per year, and the ratio between reserves 

 and annual production has dropped from a high of 

 nearly 13 in 1960 to less than 10 at the present 

 time (Table 7). Domestic exploratory drilling in 

 1968 is down 50 per cent from its peak in 1956. 



Technological developments, economics, and 

 governmental poUcies wiU also determine to what 

 extent future U.S. demand is to be met from 

 domestic oil and gas resources, from imports or 

 from alternate sources (oil shale, coal, tar sands). 



B. Supply Prospects from Domestic Offshore 

 Areas 



In discussing the petroleum resources of our 

 continental margins, a definition is required of the 

 bathymetric areas. The earth consists essentially of 

 two great topographic surfaces: The general eleva- 



VII-196 



