https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc... https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/trends-in...
https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-people-does-synthetic-fe...
When you dig a well, hit (hopefully) hit oil. As of the 2010s, we could extract oil from the fractures in the rocks using high pressure water. This is hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" as it's more commonly called.
Let's say that oil well produces 1000 barrels per day ("bpd"). Depending the oil field, the production decreases over time. For the Permian basin, which is currently the US's largest source of oil and it runs from West Texas through Oklahoma up into the Dakotas, that decline rate is 15-20%. For comparison, Saudi oil has a decline rate of 3-5%. In Saudi Arabia, you're basically just sticking a straw in the ground and hey presto, you have an oil well.
So after ~3 years, the output of your well has halved. That means, US production has to add ~2Mbpd of new oil wells every year just to maintain the ~13Mbpd of crude oil production. If we didn't drill a new well, our production would be ~6-7Mbpd in 3-4 years.
One issue with all this is that many in the industry fear we've hit peak oil production on the Permian basin and it's only going to go down from now. So we're looking for alternatives just to maintain our output.
Now, when people talk about the uses of oil, they tend to concentrate on cars and other forms of transportation. Cars have alternatives (ie EVs). Long-haul trucking is still reliant on diesel. There is no alternative to avgas currently. Or bunkers for ship fuel. Also, there are a bunch of non-energy uses for oil, such as industrial chemicals, plastics, construction (eg heavy oil for building roads). If you include strict non-energy uses it's 20-25% of cruel oil demand. If you include avgas, bunkers and even diesel, it's substantially higher.
Now, for trucking we could build out infrastructure for this but we haven't. China is doing this (of course). This would be a significant project.
I wrote another comment on this thread about the economics of Alaskan drilling. The tl'dr is it's... not good. And that's the biggest barrier. They've actually been trying to do this since 1980 and it's gone nowhere.
Its the small guys and the fly by night mom&pop producers who leave pure environmental carnage behind.
Mom and pop places that caused super funds never paid out a cent, because they were small operations that folded decades ago and never had billions anyway.
Hence my comment.
Better to just apply it for non-energy use cases.
If we ignore climate externalities, it makes sense to build solar as fast as we can and also pump oil, preferably for export.
I appreciate that "externalities" is a term from economics. But its also worth remembering that there are no externalities when it comes to the global climate and atmospheric system. There is precisely one planetary atmosphere and we all share it. When we degrade its ability to support life then that ultimately affects all life.
When you have something, and you lack the means to defend and assert that right - do you really have it? Canada has so defunded its military, that it's effectively an undefended nation.
Not anymore.
I disagree - literal generations of cutting to the bone and beyond cannot be turned around overnight. Defunding isn't just about the dollars, it's about the lost mindshare, training, culture, morale, equipment, stockpiles - everything.
It will take a generation of strong investment and actual commitment to get this force back to something it ought to be. And based on trends since the 80's, future governments will be quick to pull back on any recent allocations.
Their replacement has been a political football for the last ~20 years, extending so far beyond the rational lifetime of our original CF-18's that it boggles the mind. Those who've tried to keep rust buckets on the road know how high the cost can be for trying to keep something flying for so long.
This extends to basically every part of the Canadian military - extreme delays followed by politically motivated (and extremely bad) decision making.
The "you don't need it" excuse might have faired in the 90's post-war peace dividend times, but that's been a thing of the past for decades now. Our politicians really have used it as a chequing account when they can't make things balance. Hell, our airshow demonstration team was flying aircraft some 50 years old, and this was just disbanded - for budgetary reasons!
We've long done things radically on the cheap. From buying discarded legacy F-18's, to old garbage UK second hand subs. Hell our MCDV maritime defense vessels are cobbled-together from: a turbine for a skyscraper, WWII guns taken from museum pieces, and a hull that was never designed for any of this. You can imagine how well that worked out.
It's not just cheapness - it's political wankery. We had a multi-billion dollar helicopter contract cancelled, and paid more in fees that it would have cost to deliver the aircraft. Only to just buy those aircraft anyway years down the line. We signed on to the F-35 program, to bail on it, only to re-join it again. Our politicans act like we don't need a military, and it can be thrown around for political purposes - it's embarrassing, honestly.
If you want a good perspective from a veteran, a good resource is Esprit de Corps: https://www.youtube.com/@espritdecorpsmagazine
The US couldn't defend our bases in the area or our newly less enthusiastic regional allies. It couldn't keep the Hormuz open. The US wasted years worth of advanced munitions inventory defending against relatively cheap missiles.
The US couldn't annex Canada if it wanted to. Canada doesn't even need a military to destroy the US via assymetric tactics.
I do agree that the US military's perceived preeminence has taken a big blow, but what you're saying is just outrageously false.
Neither of those latter countries had a large shared land border with the US and ethnically similar populations that would make it easy to attack unhardened infrastructure.
Ignore the article itself; the authors do their best to pretend that the results don't say what they actually say. Look at the spreadsheet with the actual results. Q1 asks "What actions would you take, if any, to fight to defend Canada against a military attack and invasion or occupation of this country by a hostile foreign power? Select all that apply." Of the nine named choices including attend rallies and volunteer for civil defense, 12.2% would volunteer to join the military, and 10.5% would report when conscripted. 28.3% would do *none of the offered options*.
Q5 asks "If Canada were defeated and occupied by another country, which actions would you be willing to take to fight to defend Canada at that point? Select all that apply." 14.5% say they would violently resist, 14.1% would engage in "cyberwarfare" and sabotage, and 38% would engage in nonviolent resistance (protests and rallies). *48% would do none of these options*.
Q6 asks "Would you be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for Canada and die defending this country against a foreign military attack or occupation?" Yes, 15.5%. *No, 47.5%*. Maybe, 21.6%. I don't know, 15.4%.
Iraq or Afghanistan are not applicable here. Islam permits and encourages suicide bombings in a way that Christianity does not. Further, don't make me laugh about the typical Toronto Redditor soyboi <https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/330/806/8fc...>'s ability to do anything with a weapon. As said in another discussion of the above survey, "The LARPing from urbanites fantasizing about sniping and droning an invading army is the most cringe thing I've ever seen. Fuckin bugmen, every single one of them".
Also bear in mind that the survey did not identify the invading country, so the results are affected by people having in mind the likes of Russia or China. Even setting aside Trump explicitly ruling out invasion, a US annexation that would result in Canadians electing representatives to go to Washington, not Ottawa, would result in correspondingly smaller percentages for those willing to join the military, give up their lives, etc. As another Redditor put it, the first time Canadians would notice a difference in their lives is when they vote for said representatives.
I would add, or when they realize they can move to anywhere in the US tomorrow. Or when they realize they no longer as snowbirds have to follow the 180-day rule. Or they can apply to any US company's jobs. Or when they can sell to any US customer with zero tariffs, and fewer rules/taxes than to sell to another province today. Or when their USPS (formerly Canada Post) mailman starts delivering on Saturdays. Or when they get access to Hulu and to the US Netflix catalog. Etc., etc.
Given an unavoidable end result, I can kind of understand the idea that you wouldn't want to die for that. Plus there's the idea it'd be a soft invasion, where life would be good after. If Canadians had to fight for their actual lives, I would hope you'd see a bit more resistance. But that's the issue when you have a barely functional military, you can't just make one overnight.
There's already a good number of folks who would like a US annexation (in theory at least), as you allude to.
The cultural aspects are a little more complicated than what you describe, but I'll leave that.
What a horrible world you live in.
Say you're East Timor and your neighbour wants what you have - if you don't have the means to defend yourself, you're pretty much screwed (and they were). It's the main reason we have a military - this is a harsh and unforgiving world at that level, and you need to maintain a given level of capability. We are not at the "end of history" as some thought in the early 90's, and this has been doubly re-enforced after the invasion of Ukraine.
So what I'm saying is that by making such sustained and deep cuts to the Canadian military, that our political leaders have left the second largest nation in the world undefended and subject to the whim of its neighbours. And if you're paying attention, those are some pretty unsavoury neighbours.
"What a horrible world you live in" - what a snarky and hostile thing to say, why not try to understand my message before typing out such a barbed and dismissive statement?
I say again - what a horrible world you live in.
Good luck with your pacifist utopia, hope some guy with a nail in a board doesn’t come and take it all.
But there's a lot of fearmongering and misinformation here. For one thing, it's been nearly 20 years since drilling has been allowed in ANWR and, to date, zero commercial drilling has taken place. In fact, the only exploratory drilling I'm aware of is Chevron's KIC-1 effort in 1986 [3] and the results of that have been kept secret.
Now, if the results were spectacular, wouldn't you think Chevron would've started drilling? Even if there are, there are lots of reasons why it wouldn't happen.
First, just look at a map. Look at where the highways end. Depending on what you count as a road, that's either Fairbanks, Alaska (in the middle of the state) or Delta Junction (SE of Fairbanks). You would need to build massive road infrastructure all the way to ANWR. It can't be done any other way. This is above the Arctic Circle and only usable several months of the year. I've seen estimates that this alone is like $5-10 billion in investment.
Second, you need to house a lot of people up there and get them in and out. All of this is expensive. Building anything up there is expensive. You need workers for that. Those workers need housing. Everybody needs to be fed. Food needs to get in. You need water. It goes on and on and on. This is likely a $10-20 billion project (complete guess).
Third, you actually have to drill up there. In West Texas, it goes ~$8 million to drill a well [4]. How much does it cost in Alaska? Well, we have some comparative data, namely the Willow Project [5]. The costs for this are spiralling. We don't seem to have individual well costs but they say 150 wells and $9 billion. If that's true, it's $60 million per well.
As further evidence, there was an auction for ANWR leases and nobody bid [6].
You need to recover that extra cost and the only way to do it is scale so there needs to be a massive amount of oil and it's unclear if that's the case.
My point here is not that expanded drilling can't happen in Alaska. Instead it's that there are significant economic barriers to such a project and it's not as inevitable as any president just signing an executive order.
[1]: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/9/4111
[2]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...
[3]: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-apr-29-me-56952...
[4]: https://incorrys.com/energy/energy-cost/well-costs-by-play-b...
[5]: https://www.upstreamonline.com/field-development/conocophill...
[6]: https://environmentamerica.org/center/articles/why-no-one-bi...
The projects mentioned in the article, combined, would be less than 6 months of the US production.
It's important for the locals in Alaska, but it's not going to change anything globally. Except maybe killing off a few endangered species and damaging the fragile ecosystem. But that's a small price to pay for oil companies' profits.
Arctic development is also expensive, and even the planned projects would have been impractical without already-existing infrastructure.
The US is one of the most oil hungry countries on the planet, and even 3 months supply is a quarter. That would definitely move the needle on prices!
Yes. That's indeed correct. No amount of new oil discoveries or desperate attempts to put an oil well in every endangered species habitat is going to change the current trajectory.
The practically recoverable oil reserves in the US are estimated at around 150-200 billion barrels. That's about 30 years at the current production rate. Though not at the current price, a lot of reserves are economical only if the oil price is high enough.
So we'll still need to switch to something else in the long run, regardless of the CO2 pollution.
This will change things for the foreseeable future, and is certainly going to move the needle over that time.
When people are saying about "energy rush" and "vast reserves", it's important to keep mentioning that the total amount of these reserves is just enough for maybe _months_ of the total US consumption. But the damage to the ecosystems might take hundreds of years to recover, and that's not even mentioning the CO2 pollution.
And this is not common knowledge. I visit Alaska periodically, and I've heard several times from the local people that there are oil reserves there for "hundreds of years". And we're not using them because the Federal government is not allowing them to drill for it.
‘Months of US supply’ == large portions of the world GDP.
People want to get rich and/or not starve now (and for the next 20 years) too.
The world's yearly GDP is around $120T a year. 1 billion barrels at $50 per barrel is around 0.04% of that.
We also need to deduct the cost of the eventual remediation and cleanup. And the cost of resettling people from the ghost towns once the oil runs out.
Just as the Hormuz double blockade is implemented and extended. The current peace talks are just theater. Expect new "peace talks" every two weeks for years to come.
Putin, Trump and the fracking mafia will be very happy.
Renewables are absolutely going to be powering the future. Recent events have done nothing but accelerate the transition as countries are going to run to reduce their petroleum dependencies.
[0] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-...
[0] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/soaring-solar-and-a-...
They are wolves waiting to Al Haig their way into his current position.
So it seems like these new investments are in a race. Will they pay off before they become stranded assets? The Saudis and other middle east countries have the lowest production costs, so unless Alaska can somehow keep costs to ~$20/barrel, I would not bet on it.