Newswise — Jefferson W. Tester is a professor of sustainable energy systems, director of the Cornell Energy Institute and the associate director of Cornell University’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. He comments on the annual long-term report released this week by the International Energy Agency that predicted the U.S. could become the world’s top oil producer by 2017, and energy self-sufficient by 2035.
Tester says:
“A key question is how certain is the IEA that increased production of U.S. oil will be sustainable – especially from unconventional resources, for example from shale oil formations located in the Bakken field in North Dakota. The IEA appears to be claiming growth in U.S. oil production until at least 2035, but there are substantial assumptions and uncertainties in making these projections that were not articulated.
“Another question worth exploring is: Has the new IEA prediction increased the ‘official’ estimated U.S. oil reserves to anything comparable to those in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries that are rich in oil reserves? “Niels Bohr and Yogi Berra are both given credit for saying, ‘Predictions are always difficult, particularly if they are about the future.’ And that is even more true when it comes to oil reserves, which are notoriously difficult to predict.”
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