Topping off the fuel tank on a car these days represents a substantial attack on a person’s wallet. A car in the United States, faced with a 10-gallon refill, will drink the better part of US $25 at the cheapest station in town, and gasoline in the United States is a bargain compared with many parts of the world.

On the other hand, you have to wonder if the people seeking out those bargain stations,

Table 1. Recent projects and estimated costs.
pumping their own gas and griping about the price to their neighbors have any idea of the investments oil companies make and the risks they take in getting energy to gas-fired power plants, refineries that make gasoline and utilities that supply gas for heating and electricity.
Sure, you see the big numbers come out as each project hits the sanction stage, and those numbers are big enough, but when just a few of those numbers are added, they exceed the gross national product of many countries. There are just a few of these projects listed in Table 1.

More is on the way. According to the analytical department of RIA RosBusinessConsulting, quoting Rosneft President Sergei Bogdanchikov, that company’s development with the Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) on the West Kamchatka Shelf in the Sea of Okhotsk north of Sakhalin Island, Russia, will carry a $24 billion price tag. Most companies would approach that kind of investment cautiously, and this is no exception. They conducted seismic at a cost of $150 million. They will spend $270 million to $300 million on a drilling program next year. KNOC, with 40%, could spend $5 billion before first production.

The prize, according to pre-drill estimates, is 7.33 billion boe, more than Sakhalin I (2.4 billion boe) and Sakhalin II (1.3 billion boe) combined.

They’re spending that money to make a profit, but they’re also spending that money so long-haul ships and trucks can bring wine from Australia or Chile to Europe for less than $14 a bottle and deliver a thousand other goods and services at affordable prices.

Considering the benefits to the standard of living around the world, particularly future benefits to developing countries, even the maximum $37.7 trillion spending forecast through 2050 doesn’t sound all that bad.

When numbers reach that size, though, only politicians, government budgeteers and tax collectors can apply much meaning to them.

Okay, how about gasoline use? The average family in the United States uses four gallons of gasoline a day, and a barrel of oil produces about 20 gallons of gasoline, depending on the refinery and the oil quality. Let’s see, 7.33 billion bbl times 20 gallons of gasoline is 146.6 billion gallons of gasoline. That’s an even more meaningless number.

That’s one of the major hurdles the oil and gas industry has to jump to get its message across to people. The huge numbers cause eyes to glaze over in proportion to the number of digits in the figures.

Maybe industry groups and people can just tell people that they will have gasoline, and oil and natural gas, as long as they need it. It’s more reliable than wind or sun, and it’s less expensive than nearly any other kind of energy.

The industry can tell people that, whatever the energy mix will look like in the future, oil and gas will always be there to backstop other energy sources, and men and women in the industry will continue to work to make sure that happens.

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