Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Tire Gauges

On Obama being "right" about inflating tires offsetting domestic production, John Hinderaker calculates:
    • Americans drive approximately 2,880 billion miles per year. If we average 24 mpg, we use around 120 billion gallons of gasoline in our vehicles. If, through perfect tire inflation, we improved our collective fuel efficiency by 1.5%, that would be 1.8 billion gallons. A barrel of oil produces around 20 gallons of gasoline, so the total savings available through tire inflation is approximately 90,000,000 barrels of oil annually.

      How does this stack up against "all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling?"

    • ANWR: 10 billion barrels
    • Outer Continental Shelf: 18 billion barrels (estimated; the actual total is undoubtedly much higher, since exploration has been banned)
    • Oil shale: 1 trillion barrels

    So, on the above assumptions, it would take only 11,308 years of proper tire inflation to equal "all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling."

No comments: