They said it again:

“We can’t drill our way out of this.  We produce 25 percent of the world’s oil, but we only have 3 percent of the world’s oil reserve.”

I’ve heard this from Hillary, Pelosi, Obama and recently at the veep debate, I heard it from Biden.

It is a talking point.  It is a talking point in the sense that everybody says it.  Nobody thinks about it. It is not a thinking point.

But like all statistics, it says something very specific, but it doesn’t say what they say it says.

What does it say?

It compares our production to the world’s production.  They produce three times what we produce (25% vs. 75%)

It compares our reserves to the world’s reserve.  They have about thirty time the reserve that we do (3% vs about 90%).

All this really means is that the rest of the world has a heck of a lot of oil.  Much more than we do.

What doesn’t it say?

It doesn’t compare anybody’s production to anybody’s reserve.

It doesn’t say anything about what how much we need to become energy independent. Specifically, it doesn’t say anything about how much we would need to “drill our way out of this.”

I am not saying we can or can’t drill our way out.  But they are offering this statistic as proof that we can’t and we just can’t conclude that from this statistic.

What can we conclude?

We can conclude that we would run out of oil way before the rest of the world does.

What can we not conclude?

We don’t know from this statistic WHEN we would run out of oil. Since there is no comparison between anyone’s reserve and their production, we don’t know if we will run out in 10 years, 30 years, or 1000 years.  We can conclude that we will run out first, but if we will run out in 1000 years, knowing that we will run out first doesn’t really matter that much, does it?

We also don’t know from this statistic how much we can increase production.  Since there is no comparison between our production and our reserve, we could, conceivably,  double our production.  We might run out sooner, but since we don’t know from this statistic whether that would be in 15 years or 500 years, this statistic doesn’t preclude increasing production.

Therefore, we don’t know from this statistic whether we can drill our way out of this or not.  It doesn’t tell us by how much we can increase production and it doesn’t tell us how much we would need to increase production to drill our way out.

I am not offering statistics that say we can drill our way out.  I’m sure the numbers are out there and smarter people than me can figure this out.  But I know this statistic—this talking point—doesn’t make that case.

The next time I see this statistic in the context of a debate, I want the opponent to really take them to task.  Don’t let them get away with using this shabby statistic.  If they can prove—really prove—that we can’t drill our way out, make them prove it.