The U.S. Geological Survey raised its estimate this week for how much oil and gas lies underneath public lands if every possible drop were squeezed from the ground.
The newly compiled figures show that oil and gas resources from onshore federal lands could power U.S. energy needs for a window of time — four years in the case of oil and a dozen years in the case of natural gas.
USGS found in its analysis that an estimated 29.4 billion barrels of oil and 391.6 trillion cubic feet of gas lie below all federal lands, as well as 8.4 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. The areas range from protected wilderness and national parks to holdings of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Defense Department.
The estimates are of technically available “resources” — many of which may not be economically viable to extract — that could be retrieved with current technologies. While not all of the local assessments are new, USGS has compiled them across all parcels of federal lands for the first time in close to three decades.
