The state of California should go into the oil business and start drilling, that should close their budget deficit in no time. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0...il-oil-everywhere.html?boxes=Homepagetoprated
Or to put it another way - If the Chinese really are going to buy a billion new cars, that need 4 billion new tires, producing the tires alone will consume 30 discoveries like the one you cited.
How many days worth of oil consumption in California is it? As of about a decade ago, 1 billion barrels would supply California with 75% of its energy needs for a year. That makes a large difference. Remember, very small changes in supply can and do have huge impacts on prices. Seems to be a logarithmic, not linear relationship. I know that oil is fungible, but you cannot dismiss my argument out of hand.
The U.S. consumes about 21 million barrels per day. So, 1 billion barrels equals about 47 days not 12.
Oh, what a relief! By the way he probably mean WORLD consumption. 1 billion is about 5 days of world consumption. So in plain English you can wipe your ass with this discovery. The Oxy chief didn't say how much was recoverable? It could be less than half. Statistically only 30% is recoverable, just so you know before you get a hard on reading news like this....
You cannot simply look at US consumption, as that does not cover use-by-proxy of all the petro products imported from elsewhere. That find is 12 days max of global petro consumption. That's it. 47 days would be much better than 12 days. That's moves it out of worrisome territory altogether. Yes, you're right, of course. I was referring to global consumption, since we import petro-intensive products from a global supply chain.