U.S. Department of Interior last week released a report from U.S. Geological Survey that shows significant increases in undiscovered crude oil and natural gas under federally managed U.S. public lands. Doug Burgum, interior secretary, said June 18, “American energy dominance is more important than ever, and this report underscores the critical role science plays in informing our energy future.”
The report shows federal lands in Permian Basin with 8.936 billion barrels of oil and 58,468.4 billion cubic feet of gas. USGS estimates there are technically recoverable resources of 29.4 billion barrels of oil and 391.6 trillion cubic feet of gas in the nation’s public lands administered by departments of agriculture, defense, energy and interior and Tennessee Valley Authority. The most recent USGS estimates in 1998 were 7.86 billion barrels of oil and 201.1 trillion cubic feet of gas.
USGS said the increases are not due to subsurface changes, but to “the revolution in energy production since the previous USGS estimates of undiscovered oil and gas resources… Those estimates focused on conventional oil and gas accumulation and did not include all unconventional resources such as shale oil, tight oil and gas, and coal-bed gas, which are routinely produced using fracking.”
Alaska (half) and New Mexico (30 percent) account for most of the undiscovered oil. Estimates are 8.926 billion barrels of oil and 85,393.7 billion cubic feet of gas in New Mexico and 915.5 million barrels of oil and 16,776.9 billion cubic feet of gas in Texas.
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