If new offshore drilling for oil starts in the U.S., is there any possibility of finding huge deposits of oil?

Question

I would really like to hear from experts on the matter. I would support new offshore drilling if the chance of finding substantial amounts of oil/natural gas was possible. Is it? Is there any chance at all that deposits like the ones in the Middle East could be found? Any chance at all? Thanks.

Please don't debate whether or not it should be allowed. I don't care about your opinion on that. I just want to know if there is any chance at all that huge deposits could be found. Thanks.

Answer 1

No.  We already have a reasonable estimate of how much oil is there, how deep it is, and how much is recoverable.

That having been said, there are always anomalies.  Statistically, it is possible that there are significant reserves that have not been identified, but that would make the assumption that we haven't done any testing in a significantly large area, and there aren't any significantly large areas where we haven't looked.  People have been looking for oil since the 1800's, and the development of new technologies have increased the ability to find oil in places where we previously thought might not be profitable, or in places where we previously thought maximum production had already been reached.

So, yes, it's possible, but not likely.  Just to put a number on it (and this is just an educated guess), I'd say you've got a 1 in 20 chance that the Proven Reserves numbers are underestimated by 10-15%, and probably a 1 in 5,000,000 chance that the Proven Reserve estimates are underestimated by 1200%.  That's the difference between theirs and ours (Saudi Arabia 267 billion to our 21 billion).

Just for laughs, here's the top twenty-five list and their numbers:

Saudi Arabia 267

Canada 178

Iran 132

Iraq 115

Kuwait 104

United Arab Emirates 98

Venezuela 80

Russia 60

Libya 39

Nigeria 36

USA 21

China 18

Qatar 15

Mexico 13

Algeria 11

Brazil 11

Kazakhstan 9

Norway 8

Azerbaijan 7

India 6

Oman 5

Angola 5

Ecuador 4

Indonesia 4

United Kingdom 4

Answer 2

It's not going to be a lot of oil, not enough to keep us going for years & years.  For the last century we drilled for oil in the places where it was easiest to get.  Now some of those places are used up so we're looking for oil in places where it's harder to get, which is offshore.

Whether or not we drill for oil in ANWR and offshore, we're still going to need to find another source of energy soon.  Even a good-sized discovery of oil in either place will not significantly increase the world supply.  We should be working on the next big energy source now.