[Paul Victorey]

Originally posted by Tuf Those certainly aren't the figures quoted by the American Petroleum Institute. There are plenty of companies chomping at the bit to extract that trivial amount. Of course seeing how I work in the Energy Industry I will reserve my opinion as to whether or not we should drill in Alaska, you probably know what it is anyway. We have three choices as of now Oil, Coal or Nuclear Energy. Personally I think they are all viable and think we are foolish to not be using them all for their strong points.

From Yahoo News:

How much oil can be recovered from the refuge is a contentious point in the debate. [Interior Secretary Gale] Norton told the committee that government estimates range from 5.7 billion to 16 billion barrels of oil within Area 1002, with the mean value of technically recoverable oil coming in at 10.4 billion barrels. But the term "technically recoverable" is not the same as "economically recoverable," which many believe is a more accurate figure. This figure takes into account the cost of finding, developing, producing and transporting the oil to market based on a 12 percent return on investment after taxes. For example, using 1996 dollars, the USGS [United States Geological Survey] estimated that at $24 per barrel, there is a 95 percent chance that at least two billion barrels can be economically recovered and a five percent probability that 9.4 billion barrels are economically recoverable.

So, we're looking at something between 2 billion and 9 billion barrels of oil. The US uses 19.6 million barrels of oil per day, which comes out to 7 billion and change per year. So we're looking at somewhere between 3 months to 15 months of oil. 6 months of oil (approx. 3.5 billion barrels) works out to be the 50% probability point -- i.e. every barrel of oil beyond the 3.5 billion mark has less than a 50% chance of being economically recoverable.