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Jake Tapper, Politifacts, and Barack Obama’s Claim About Inflating Tires

It does not really hold up when compared to drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf.

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  August 6th, 2008 at 06:34 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Jake Tapper has up a post quoting Politifact.com’s claim that Barack Obama is right on the inflating your tires thing.

Tapper also quotes statements by the government in 1990. They say: overinflate your tires (that saves 50,000 barrels of oil a day). They also say: overinflate your tires, drive more slowly, and join car pools (those measures in total will save 7 million gallons of gasoline a day). To be clear: this ignores the fact that only one-quarter of cars under-inflate their tires.

In 1990, 7 million gallons of gasoline a day was less than 2% of what we consumed. 50,000 barrels of oil produces just under a million gallons of gasoline, so the contribution from overinflating your tires amounts to about a third of one percent of total consumption.

So Obama, Tapper, and the George H. W. Bush Administration agree that overinflating our tires will be as good as saving 50,000 barrels of oil a day. What does that cost in increased wear and replacement costs on tires?

The OCS is said to contain 18 billion barrels of crude, although I can’t vouch for that. Saudi has 250 billion total and produces almost 10 million a day. Iraq has, according to some sources, almost 250 billion and produces 3 million a day. If the most that Obama thinks we could get out of the OCS is 50,000 barrels a day, he’s right that it’s not worth doing. There are individual wells in the Gulf of Mexico that produce that much, today.

Except the Politifact piece says the OCS can produce 200,000 barrels a day (updated: as Dave notes in the comments, 200,000 barrels a day is extremely conservative to the point of being nonsensical) for upwards of , again very conservatively, 3.5 to 4 million gallons of of gasoline a day.

Now, of course, the Democrats counter that it’d take ten years. Of course, ten years ago they were saying we should not do it because it would take . . . you guessed it, ten years to do. They do not consider new technologies, however, that could speed of the process and they discount many oil industry analysts who say it could take just two years.

In the meantime, China continues taking our oil in the OCS.

(Hat tip to Blackhedd for the analysis)

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COMMENTS

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  • Dave_in_Fla

    This line:

    Except the Politifact piece says the OCS can produce 200,000 barrels a day for upwards of 3.5 to 4 million gallons of of gasoline a day.

    Needs some clarification, since it is a clear misreading of the EIA or MMS reports. We’ve talked about this topic a lot over the last two days. The new Thunderhorse platform in the gulf alone will produce 250,000 barrels a day when at full production.

    That 200K number is nonsensical.

  • streiff

    I don’t know how many of you remember the Kuwaiti oil field fires and the predictions that they’d burn for years.

    The notion that it would take 10 years to substantially exploit the OCS simply flies in the face of our experience. It didn’t take 10 years to build the transcontinental railroad.

  • Dave_in_Fla

    In 10 years our oceans will die – Ted Danson

    We only have 10 years to fix global warming – Al Gore

  • CrabCakes

    George Will started the rumor (no telling where he pulled it from), Cheney repeated it, and it became gospel.

    It’s not true, though, as Cheney now acknowledges.

  • streiff

    for this, or not?

  • CrabCakes
  • bk

    Obama will eliminate our need for oil from the Middle East and Chavezistan in 10 years.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5zHZIEI_xI

    Anyone making flip statements like that as though they are fact has no business as President. This isn’t the same thing as Kennedy’s wanting to put a man on the moon before the decade was over.

  • Dave_in_Fla

    But you do still have Cuba allowing exploration 60 miles off the Florida coast. This will eventually lead to Cuban oil production from an area we choose to not exploit.

    The good news is that if they find something, it gives us a head start when the OCS is finally opened up.

  • CrabCakes

    Cuba has definitely shown interest in drilling (or more precisely, getting paid to let others drill) in the OCS, and in the future the leaseholders, none of which is Chinese, may take advantage of those leases, although none currently are.

    That sounds a whole lot less dire than “China continues taking our oil,” though.

  • Vladimir

    … is that it’s probably right.

    The reason is not technical, it’s regulatory and legal.

    That all could be changed. Congress has the power to change it.

    But congressional leadership now has a vested interest in making sure that it takes ten years (if it ever happens at all).

  • streetwise

    After all, it takes a whole two weeks of work before most see a paycheck.

    It takes a year of work before you see a bonus.

    It takes forty years of work to get a pension or equivalent via 401K.

    And that, my friends, is the allure of being a Democratic politician. You get all the good things of life with NO work.

    No wonder why they think it works like that in the real world.

  • Dave_in_Fla

    At least IMO. I never really cared about the “china” piece of it, since even if it was China, it was Chinese companies, not the government itself. Heck, using that argument, China controls the Port of Los Angeles too.

    The dire part is the refusal to open up for exploration. Regardless of how many years it will take to find and exploit the resources, we have wasted 18 years by not doing it. The longer we delay, the longer until we have the bridge we need to get us to the alternatives (I’m strongly including nuclear and shale in my definition of alternatives).

    Allowing the existing wells off California to go back online would help us during the exploration phase.

  • mikefisk

    Even for all the maintenance things on a car that can improve fuel economy, in raw gas savings, you get more bang for the buck on the gas guzzlers. (As an example, increasing a truck from 12 to 15 MPG saves as much gas as increasing a car’s mileage from 30 to 60).

    Other than the SUVs, the biggest categories of vehicles on the road in terms of gas guzzling are all primarily either driven by commercial owners sensitive to costs already (full-size vans, semis) or by people who tend to be more vehicle-savvy than most (full-size pickups, sports cars). So the biggest source of savings has already been made.

    Enjoy squeezing blood from a stone, Senator.

  • Gustavion

    Anything that comes out of Obama’s mouth about energy is just trash. All of his policies plan to steal the liberty of the American people right out of their hands. I think the best option if for us, as consumers, to support ‘green’ business with our dollars, in the energy sector and all others. For example Simplestop.net stops your postal junk mail and benefits the environment.