Do You Have the Energy For This?

The headline from Obama's Energy speech is likely to be his "flip flop" (or whatever) on drilling. But what's the headline behind the headline? As usual, "Obama Stuns Nation by Revealing Himself to be a Politician." Here's a particularly interesting paragraph from that speech:

George Bush's own Energy Department has said that if we opened up new areas to drilling today, we wouldn't see a single drop of oil for seven years. Seven years. And Senator McCain knows that, which is why he admitted that his plan would only provide “psychological” relief to consumers. He also knows that if we opened up and drilled on every single square inch of our land and our shores, we would still find only three percent of the world's oil reserves. Three percent for a country that uses 25% of the world's oil. Even Texas oilman Boone Pickens, who's calling for major new investments in alternative energy, has said, “this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of.”

It's a great sample in miniature of Obama's policy speeches in general: A whack at Bush, a whack at McCain, an example that shows some kind of broad consensus, some mocking and a couple of really impressive numbers. (Hillary used too many stats, McCain probably doesn't use enough.) And, as with all political speeches, if you drill down into it (ha! ha!), there's a lot of gray in between the lines of black and white.

A particularly interesting paragraph from Obama's Energy speech:

George Bush's own Energy Department has said that if we opened up new areas to drilling today, we wouldn't see a single drop of oil for seven years. Seven years. And Senator McCain knows that, which is why he admitted that his plan would only provide “psychological” relief to consumers. He also knows that if we opened up and drilled on every single square inch of our land and our shores, we would still find only three percent of the world's oil reserves. Three percent for a country that uses 25% of the world's oil. Even Texas oilman Boone Pickens, who's calling for major new investments in alternative energy, has said, “this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of.”

It's a great sample in miniature of Obama's policy speeches in general: A whack at Bush, a whack at McCain, an example that shows some kind of broad consensus, some mocking and a couple of really impressive numbers. (Hillary used too many stats, McCain probably doesn't use enough.) And, as with all political speeches, if you drill down into it (ha! ha!), there's a lot of gray in between the lines of black and white.

That "not a drop of oil for seven years" line is highly Googable, but I'm having trouble tracking down any specific DoE report that is the source for it. It is, however, possible to find the DoE reporting to Ted Stevens that opening up ANWR won't make a difference for ten years. Let's just take it as a given that it takes a while to get oil out of the ground and into cars.

His second assertion, that McCain touts his plan as providing "only" "psychological" relief, is misleading though not untrue. During the weeks when he was pushing for a "gas tax holiday" (a proposal of such little use even his advisors mocked it), McCain eventually defended it as offering "psychological" relief, which totally makes sense if you think that the economic downturn is, you know, all in our minds. (Maybe the government should give Prozac rather than rebates.) But aside from the ludicrous holiday scheme, McCain has the most comprehensive energy plan of any of his former rivals, and despite his hedging as of late on issues such as offshore drilling, he remains a proponent of alternative energy, conservation, and "green technology."

When Obama says that the United States only possesses, at best, "three percent of the world's oil reserves," might be true but it's also a massive simplification of the mathematical and geological hurdles that have to be jumped to get at what any one country's oil reserves are. It's so complicated, no one is really sure how much oil is available in the world, total. The top twelve oil-possessing (as opposed to oil-producing) countries (of which the U.S. is one) have "proved oil reserves" of about 1,137 billions of barrels (as of 2007). When I ran the DoE numbers to figure out what percentage of that was in the U.S., I actually got a number smaller than the scary one Obama provides. (Obama's number may come from speculation about future discoveries.)

But that hardly matters, because despite having so little of the world's raw crude oil, we produce a lot more than three percent (or one percent) of the oil what's consumed. We produce 10 percent of the world's oil that's consumed...though that's still an embarrassing number compared to the (totally accurate figure of) 25 percent of the world's oil that we consume.

Lastly, the T. Boone quote is right, just incomplete. Pickens thinks we need to do more than drill, but that we also need to drill. He simply acknowledges the same fact that McCain does: drilling won't solve everything.

Which brings me to a larger point: Drilling won't solve everything, but it's difficult to imagine curing our "strategic dependence" on foreign oil* -- much less our dependence on foreign oil, period -- by not expanding domestic drilling somehow. Environmental experts admit this, and I think by putting drilling back on the table, as part of a "comprehensive" solution, Obama's admitted it, too. It's another tack to the middle for the candidate, not as craven as the FISA one, but probably just as necessary to eventually winning.

And why don't I do this kind of minute fact-checking for the rest of the speech? Or for all of them, including McCain's? Because it is difficult, and it takes awhile (I started looking into this paragraph at noon today). But I should do it more, and I will.

*Having to buy oil from countries that hate us.