"Energy literacy" and "peak oil literacy" should be requirements for pundits – and for citizens more generally. I've followed these issues for many years now, and the poor energy knowledge among even the chattering classes and punditry still amazes me.
A recent MSNBC show allowed a guest to state, without challenge, that U.S. oil production is now at an all-time high. No one, including the host and three other guests, objected to this statement. Many articles in various media outlets are now trumpeting the new “oil boom” in the U.S.
The fact is that U.S. oil production is a bit more than half of what it was at its peak in the early 1970s. It is not even close to an all-time high. This is not a small discrepancy in facts — every pundit should know this information when discussing our current and future energy needs.
The big news recently is, however, that the national decline in oil production has been halted, and we’ve seen a recent uptick in production. The recent bump in oil production is being hailed by breathless pundits and policitians as a prelude to complete energy independence. This is pure hyperbole, as the first two figures show graphically.
We produce less than six million barrels of oil per day and we consume about nineteen, a difference of about thirteen million barrels per day. Even when we add liquid fuels from domestic natural gas production and biofuels, we still import about 40 percent of our petroleum.
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