The Oil Drum

4. According to 2006 projections, what percentage of global energy demand in 2030 will be met by fossil fuels, such as oil, natural gas and coal?

- and how do they define "demand"? Will fossil fuels meet the 2007 level in 2030, let alone a growing "demand"? And what percent of the "fossil fuels" supply will be oil (rather than coal) by 2030?

5. What percentage of U.S. domestic energy needs are currently met by imports?

- misleading question as others noted. Covering up the current lack of a substitute for oil in transportation specifically. Also does not mention the major outsourcing of energy-hungry manufacturing to other countries in recent years. E.g., much of the production of nitrogen fertilizer from natural gas, so our food is now dependent on imports of fertlizer. And of course all the doo-dads made in China, from shoes to nails.

9. Current government policy restricts access to what percentage of potential offshore U.S. oil and natural gas development sites off the coasts of the lower 48 states?

- another misleading question. What is "potential", do they leave any area out? And how is the percentage computed, by area, number of sites, or by "potential" amounts of oil and gas? And of course they are only counting "potential" sites, not the ones already developed, thus masking the fact that the most productive sites have already been used up, and the "potential" sites will probably not add a large percentage to the total?

10. From 2000 through 2005, U.S. oil and natural gas companies invested how many billions of dollars in emerging energy technologies in North America (such as biomass, wind, solar, alternative fuel vehicles, gas-to-liquids and oil shale)?

- which companies invested how much in what? The words "such as" imply that there are other "emerging energy technologies" not listed, and perhaps they got a lot of the money? E.g., tar sands? Coal to liquids? Nuclear?

11. According to Oil and Gas Journal, at 2006 production rates, how many years will the global "known reserves" of oil last?

- and how long will they last at exponentially growing rates of extraction? And what are the feasible rates of extraction as we get further into the harder-to-extract tail end of the reserves? (Which is the main point of "peak oil theory".)

13. According to 2007 projections, what percentage of U.S. energy will be supplied by renewable sources by 2030?

- whose projections, and what are they based on? Probably assumes an exponential increase of fossil fuel usage, along with some growth in renewables? What happens to the percentage if the fossil fuel supply shrinks?

14. What percentage of gasoline used in the U.S. would be replaced by ethanol, using current corn-based production technology, if every acre of corn was used for ethanol production exclusively?

- does not count fossil fuels used to grow and process the corn and ethanol, i.e., it's the gross, not the net, amount. Since the fuels used for that are mostly diesel, natural gas and coal, and they said "gasoline", they may be technically correct but still misleading.

17. In the history of the world, the energy industry has produced about a trillion barrels of oil and developed about another trillion into proved reserves for future production. How much recoverable conventional oil does the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimate remains to be discovered in the future?

- note it says "conventional oil ... remains to be discovered ... Between 1 and 2 times the amount of oil that has already been produced". Is even the USGS that optimistic?