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Driven primarily by transportation fuel consumption, the US’s demand for crude oil far exceeds its supply, causing it to rely heavily on imports to meet the domestic supply deficit

Conventional petroleum production in the US will run out.

Geophysicist Dr. M. King Hubbert predicted US oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970 at 3 billion barrels per year. In December of 1970, US oil production peaked at 3.4 billion barrels per year, since then there has been a continued decline of US oil production and an increased gap between supply and demand in the US. Source: hubbertpeak.com

The US consumes approximately 20 million of the 85 million barrels of oil consumed globally per day, but produces less than 7 million barrels per day, leaving it with a net production deficit of approximately 13 million barrels.

The US relies on hundreds of domestic oil fields to produce the approximate 6.7 million barrels per day. Only 5 oil fields in the US, listed below in order of production volume, produce at a rate of 100,000 barrels per day or greater.

Source: 2009 BP Review of World Energy

The World’s proven reserves of oil total 1.36 trillion barrels today, but unconventional sources of oil already outnumber conventional sources

The largest percentage of the 1.36 trillion barrels of oil left in the proven oil reserves around the world come from the Middle East at 760 billion barrels. The Middle East’s reserves far surpass any of the other regions of the World with North America coming next at 217 billion barrels and Africa following with 122 billion barrels.

Of the oil that makes up the current fossil reserves, 70% are nonconventional oil. Nonconventional oil sources are inherently more difficult and costly to produce, but are a greater percentage of our current reserves due to conventional oil resource depletion.

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