Oil reserves in the United States

[1] In 2012, the Energy Information Administration using data compiled by the United States Geological Survey under the Department of the Interior estimated US undiscovered, technically recoverable oil resources to be an additional 198 billion barrels.

The United States maintains a Strategic Petroleum Reserve at four sites on the Gulf of Mexico, with a total capacity of 727 million barrels (115.6×10^6 m3) of crude oil.

The maximum total withdrawal capability from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve is 4.4 million barrels (700,000 m3) per day.

[16] In May 2008 the EIA used this assessment to estimate the potential cumulative production of the 1002 area of ANWR to be a maximum of 4.3 billion barrels (680,000,000 m3) from 2018 to 2030.

This estimate is a best case scenario of technically recoverable oil during the area's primary production years if legislation were passed in 2008 to allow drilling.

Large accumulations like the Prudhoe Bay oil field (whose ultimate recovery is approximately 13 billion barrels (2.1×109 m3)), are not expected to occur.

[18] In April 2008, the USGS released a report giving a new resource assessment of the Bakken Formation underlying portions of Montana and North Dakota.

The USGS believes that with new horizontal drilling technology there is somewhere between 3.0 and 4.5 billion barrels (480×10^6 and 720×10^6 m3) of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in this 200,000 square miles (520,000 km2) formation that was initially discovered in 1951.

In 2011, Harold Hamm claimed that the recoverable share may reach 24 billion barrels (3.8×109 m3); this would mean that Bakken contains more extractable petroleum than all other known oil fields in the country, combined.

The moratoria and presidential withdrawal cover about 85 percent of OCS area offshore the lower 48 states.