2024 North American Energy Inventory - Highlighted Article

From: IER

Date: May 14, 2024

2024 North American Energy Inventory

In 2011, IER released the first edition of the North American Energy Inventory. At the time, the U.S. energy situation looked far different than it does today. In 2011, the United States was the third largest oil producer behind Russia and Saudi Arabia and conventional wisdom held that we were running out of oil, natural gas, and even coal.

At the time, then President Obama echoed this sentiment in numerous speeches when he claimed that because the United States only had 2 or 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves we couldn’t “simply drill our way out of our energy problems.” President Obama, it seems, did not understand what is really meant by the term “oil reserves.” In reality, “oil reserves” represent only a fraction of the total oil resources available. Consequently, we successfully addressed many of our energy challenges by tapping into this broader pool of resources. Put another way, we did drill our way to energy security and more stable prices.

The first edition of the Inventory successfully challenged the myth of energy scarcity. We demonstrated that North America has vast energy resources—far more energy resources than people thought or believed at the time.

The Inventory was released when the shale revolution was beginning to pick up steam. Since 2005, oil production in the U.S. has increased by 149 percent and natural gas production has more than doubled. These massive increases, which have catapulted the U.S. to the world’s top producer of both oil and natural gas, were the result of a combination of hydraulic fracturing, precision drilling, and private ownership of the subsurface in key parts of the United States. The hydraulic fracturing revolution has spread to some federal lands, but due to more onerous federal regulations, the benefits of increased production have occurred largely on private lands. (continue reading)

2024 North American Energy Inventory