How to Drill for Cheap Oil in the Suburbs

America's biggest oil reserves may be in our suburbs. We won't actually have to drill for oil and pollute our neighborhoods and so on but the amount of our oil dependence can be reduced by millions of barrels. At the TPM Cafe, Nathan Newman writes that such metaphorical drilling for oil is already taking place:

Instead of looking in Alaska for a massive source of energy, look at New York City.

It doesn't look to most people like an oil geyser, but every day New York City residents consume just one-third of the gasoline used by other Americans and one-half of the residential energy use of a typical American. They drive fewer cars because of a well-developed mass transit system and their multi-unit buildings use less energy per household.

That adds up to the equivalent of between 221,000,000 to 296,000,000 barrels of oil saved per year by New York residents -- just a bit less than the 320,000,000 barrels per year that would be produced by the ANWR field in Alaska at its peak production....

(snip)

...While New York City's outstanding energy efficiency is a product of its unique history, every urban and suburban area could be producing energy savings with better transit and more energy-efficient buildings, leading to BILLIONS of barrels of oil saved across the country.

I thank Mr. Newman for a great metaphor. Unfortunately, he doesn't go into details (though he does offer a couple of links) and I doubt New York City is a model that can be extended as well as he claims but there's no question enormous savings can be found in our overall energy bills if we start thinking about what we're doing. Ideas and technology that have been around for decades are still excellent resources for reducing our dependence on foreign oil; and they're a much cleaner way to 'drill' for crude.

Significant funds for research into energy efficiency and alternative fuels have languished for years but a new infusion of money into research is likely to be far more cost-effective than rushing to empty the world's remaining fossil fuel reserves so that executives of energy companies can make their maximum buck (believe me, they're going to make money anyway).