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I’d Better Get a Heavy-Duty Tire Gauge
2008 Presidential Election, National Politics, Politics
So, The Word I am hearing is that John McCain is somehow an idiot for taking issue with Barak Obama’s insistence that we need to properly inflate our tires and get tune-ups to save as much gasoline as “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling.”
Think Progress follows up the ridicule with a piece by the Director of Communications for the Auto Alliance which has been characterized as confirming Obama’s view of things. It includes the following stats:
• The Department of Energy estimates that 1.2 billion gallons of fuel were wasted in 2005 as a result of driving on under-inflated tires.• Fuel efficiency is reduced by 1% for every 3 PSI that tires are under-inflated.
• Proper tire inflation can save the equivalent of about 1 tank of gas per year.
• Proper tire inflation also reduces CO2 emissions.
• Experts estimate that 25% of automobiles are running on tires with lower than recommended pressure, because people don’t know how to check their tires or don’t realize that tires naturally lose air over time.
Well, then. Let’s look at the numbers then.
First of all, notice that 75% of automobiles are already properly inflated. So, we’re dealing with oil savings from only one in four automobiles.
A barrel of oil produces around 20 gallons of gasoline, so the total savings available through tire inflation is approximately 60,000,000 barrels of oil annually (1,200,000,000 gallons of fuel / 20 gallons per barrel).
Estimated reserves:
ANWR: 7,700,000,000 barrels of oil. Assuming that we take 20 years to extract it, that is a gain of 6,500,000,000 gallons of fuel per year (((7,700,000,000/20 years) barrels * 20 gallons of gasoline per barrel) - 1,200,000,000 gallons) over tire inflation. Every single car owner in the United States would have to keep their tires properly inflated for 128.3 years to save the amount of oil in the federally controlled portion of ANWR.
Outer Continental Shelf: The mean estimate of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil is 85,900,000,000 barrels. Assuming the same 20 years to extract, that is a gain of 84,700,000,000 gallons of fuel per year (((85,900,000,000/20 years) barrels * 20 gallons of gasoline per barrel) - 1,200,000,000 gallons) over tire inflation. Every single car owner in the United States would have to keep their tires properly inflated for 1,431.67 years to save the amount of oil in the outer continental shelf.
Now, certainly 60,000,000 barrels of oil annually is nothing to sneeze at, but to claim that inflating tires and getting a tune-up would get us “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling” is ludicrous. Unless Mr. Obama’s plan is so long term that he’s looking about 1,500 years down the road, that is. I’d better get a heavy-duty tire gauge.
The Auto Alliance writer put it best:
Maintaining proper tire pressure may not solve our dependence on foreign oil, but it will help. Consumers can get a few more miles to gallon, and when combined other driving and maintenance tips, those small steps can help to make a serious improvement in vehicle fuel economy.
And while John McCain has never denied that, he has also never said that getting a few more miles per gallon offsets what tapping our own reserves will give us. And Obama did.
MickC @ August 5, 2008
I’m surprised at you. Never would have guessed that you were capable of math this bad.
First, starting with ANWR, it’s not “20 years to extract it all”, it’s going to take twenty years to build capacity just to get it out of the ground at the maximum possible rate, which would then represent about 5% of the US total consumption at current rates. Second, in exactly one year, people aren’t going to spontaneously decide to deflate their tires again. That savings continues to occur.
This means that, not only is tire inflation an immediate savings, it saves more oil than ANWR generates in any year prior to the thirteenth year of drilling, and saves more oil in total over the first seventeen years of drilling.
ANWR as a solution does not pay off for at least three presidential administrations.
First of all, let me do a little happy dance because your comment went through the first time!
Second, I’ve been around for field turn-ups, so I do know about ramping production. Been there, done that, cared for the pumps some 20 years ago in West Texas fields that are now running dry except for CO2 injection boosts.
Except for truly massive fields you can expect the useful life of a field to run in the 15-20 year range. Truly massive oil fields (like those in the Middle East, Prudhomme Bay, and the Brent Sea) will run on for 50 years or more (and I’ve heard some argument that some of those fields will be dry in the next 30 years). But, to simplify the math for math-impaired me, I chose to use 20 years to cancel out the 20 gallons/barrel in my equations.
So yeah, I averaged things over the term of the respective fields and I’m not apologizing for doing so. The result of that averaging is that I don’t assume that people “spontaneously decide to deflate their tires again” after one year but rather they are re-inflating them year over year (which we both know won’t happen as people will tend to check once and then never again). It’s not a one time savings, but rather an annual savings.
You will also notice that I’m not only relying on ANWR as a solution, but the OCS, which has far greater reserves. My point is found in the last bit, though: Obama saying that Americans inflating their tires will get them “all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling” just ain’t true. Even if it takes the next 13 years to really get at it.
“Inflate your tires and tune-up your car” is great advice and people should follow it. But it’s even more gimmicky than a $1000/family energy rebate or a gas tax holiday. The only thing it has going for it is that it’s a gimmick that is revenue neutral for the government’s coffers.