Republican Whip Roy Blunt

December 18, 2007 was the culmination of a very difficult couple of months for the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.

What started as a bang with a promise by the speaker to draw on the expertise of 11 separate House committees in assembling her caucus’s energy package, ended with a whimper – the skeletal remains of a modest CAFE provision and (not so modest) RFS mandate left intact, but Rep. Nick Rahall’s bid to lock down millions of additional acres to American energy development left on the cutting room floor.

On December 18^th, the congressman had his revenge – standing with three other Democrats in voting against his leadership’s energy bill. Some at the time explained it away as a simple case of sour grapes; others saw it as a clear indication he’d be pushed aside in the future as his caucus sought to gain footing in the Brave New World of three-digit oil and four-dollar gas.

But reports of his demise turned out to be greatly exaggerated. And now six months removed from his protest vote on the floor, Rahall’s talking point that U.S. energy firms are “stockpiling 68 million acres” of land with the capacity to produce “4.8 million barrels of oil a day” – three ANWRs according to the Dept. of Interior, six ANWRs according to Rep. Hinchey – has become de rigueur among Democrats in Washington, D.C.  From his release:

Unwilling to bring new homegrown supply online, and unable to explain why their “NOPEC” and “price-gouging” bills didn’t bring the immediate price relief they promised, Rahall’s fellow Democrats didn’t hesitate to pick up Rahall’s talking point and beat it like a rented mule. Because, after all: Why should these companies get access to NEW sites if they steadfastly refuse to produce the $140 oil lying dormant on their existing sites? Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel had a line in-the-ready:

And so did Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.):

And so did Rep. Maurice “Menshevik” Hinchey (D-N.Y.):

And even some guy named John Yarmuth spoke up, allegedly a congressman from Kentucky:

Heck, even Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder – never the same since “Vitalogy” was released, in our judgment – must’ve been on the Rahall listserv:

So we’re left, then, with two questions: If it’s true that U.S. energy firms don’t jam an oil or gas rig on every single acre of land to which they hold a claim, why is that? And second: What of the argument that “4.8 million barrels of oil” and “44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas” – A DAY – would be available to U.S. energy consumers if these iniquitous oil companies would just drill on those “idle 68 million acres”? Where’d they come up with that?

Thanks to solid work by the minority staff of the Natural Resources Committee and the pros over at the Republican Conference, the “68 million acres” myth was debunked within minutes of it being uttered (see here, here, here, here, and here). But what about this new claim -- that our country could double its daily energy production if Big Oil would just start drilling on non-producing lands?

According to Rahall, it’s all about the “extrapolation”:

That’s a full 25 percent of the total energy America’s uses every day – nothing to sneeze at. So how did Democrats come up with these numbers? Last week, Republicans on the Resources Committee asked for an explanation, and are still waiting for a reply. But as Democrats prepare to bring forth their heralded “Use It or Lose It” bill this week (or are they?), GOP staff took out their slide rule and calculators and took a closer look.

Here’s what they found (via this Dear Colleague letter from Rep. Don Young):

First up, Democrats found the total number of acres in active production right now: 23.7 million.
Next, they acquired the daily output totals for the energy produced on that acreage: 1.6 million barrels of oil; 15.58 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

Then they set up a simple proportion: If 23.7 million of America’s most productive energy acres produce 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, and 15.58 billion cubic feet of natural gas – wonder what we can say these 68 million non-producing acres could produce?

According to Rahall’s logic, the answer is: The same exact amount. Multiplied by 2.8 (as in 23.7 x 2.8 = 68).

In other words, since America’s best 23.7 million acres produce 1.6 million barrels of oil a day and 15.58 billion cubic feet of gas – it must be the case, in Rahall’s world, that the same amount of energy could be generated from every other acre of American land as well – times three.

Only thing he needed to do to conjure that up is assume every square foot of Earth holds the same amount of energy as any other parcel.  Wonder what the Saudis would say about that assumption?

But what happens if those same assumptions are used to x-strap-o-late a bit on our own?

Take ANWR, for instance. Using Rahall’s assumptions, we can extrapolate that ANWR’s 1.5 million acre coastal plain would produce 750 million barrels of oil per day – 156 times more oil than the 4.8 million barrels Democrats insist we can get from “inactive” leases. All you need to do is assume you’ll find the same amount of energy in the entire coastal plain as we know lies trapped under the 2,000 acres we’ve fought the past 30 years to produce on.

By the way: 750 million barrels of oil is 38 times the amount of oil American consumers use each day – produced on just 1.5 million acres of land. Think we’d have $4 gasoline if we had access to that cache?

So the next time you hear Rep. Rahall suggest that endless energy can be found in areas professional geologists have deemed barren, tell him that you’ll see his “4.8 million barrel” assertion – and raise him 750 million barrels. Because ANWR’s an awful big place – and according to Rahall’s logic, there’s no reason to think we won’t find gushers on every square inch of it.