That's funny, the Energy Information Administration says that proven oil in the U.S is more like 21 billion barrels (again, a 3 year supply). May I ask where you got the 900 billion barrel figure? We are talking just oil here. If you include natural gas and oil shale, sure that changes the overall energy picture siginificantly but the simple truth is that anything you get from the oil shale will be ridiculously expensive to produce, therefore only making gas far more expensive than it is now. And natural gas is a different animal altogether that you can't easily power a traditional car from.

The truth that very few want to officially recognize is that U.S domestic production has been falling since the 70's. Not because of failure to expand the industry but because most of the easy to get stuff in big finds domestically has already been found and exhausted.

But let's step back and take a look at the bigger picture outside the U.S- worldwide, proven reserves will last us approximately 40 years at current rate of consumption..if it continues to rise as predicted it will be more like 35 years before our proven reserves is exhausted. Sure, after that there are unproven reserves but those are in much harder to get places and is of much lower quality (oil shale falls into this lower quality as it's not really oil but a precursor to it) will cost a LOT more to get. Think of it like this- once we exhaust current proven reserves the cost of extraction and production will guarantee that we'll be paying at least 10 dollars a gallon or more (Europe's already there, so nut much of a stretch of the imagination)

Instead of trying to prolong the inevitable with a band-aid solution that in no way addresses the real problems (those problems being market speculation and a denial of the facts about how much readily accessible oil there is left) we should instead be embarking on a manhattan project of alternative energy initiatives. Carter started these initiatives decades ago but Reagan cancelled most of them within the first 60 days of his administration. If we had stuck with them there would be mass produced viable alternatives to oil and gas dependency that we have today.

Instead, today there is nothing ready to go off the shelf. There are viable alternatives but they are neither mass-produced nor have they undergone the generational developments that make products better, smaller, more efficient and inexpensive. Our current situation with alternative energy solutions would be like if the 286 PC was invented and then left on the shelf for decades... without being mass produced or undergoing development (386, then 486, different processor architecture and memory, blah blah blah) it instead just sat there with only a handful ever produced and only being worked on by a small number of 'gee-whiz' hobbyists.

We've landed men on the moon, cracked the atom and succeeded in producing anti-matter. Surely we can overcome a dependeny on coal for electricity and oil for transportation!

Is it foolish to believe that there's some global conspiracy to just ignore alternative solutions until our oil runs as a means to gain more money from it? I mean look at two scenarios shall we:

1) Alternate Power source found, lets say for example we found a means to create Nuclear Fushion efficentley and on a large scale in say the next 2 years (we've actually being creating Nuclear Fushion for years in Oxford, but just not efficentley enough nor on a large enough scale) as so that everyone can drive electric cars that they charge on their mains power supply at home. Fushion has no radioactive waste, creates no green house emmissions and require only heavy water to power - which our planet has in abundance.

These would quickly replace conventional powerplants and motor veichles, leaving the oil companies without 99% of their consumer base.

2) Nuclear Fushion or other alternative methods go largley unfunded and when i say unfunded i'm talking in terms of the scale of as Artysim said, the Manhatten Project,  the nearst of which is the global  joint venture  named ITER  of the tune of £6.6billion dollars  (a laughable amount considering the amount of countries involved and compared to how much one country has spent on the Iraq WAR). Suh projects don't return much for another 20-25 years which guess what is roughly about the time we'll genuinley start seeing depletion of conventional oil reserves, by this time the oil prices would be so high that the oil companies will be beyond caring as they'd of no doubt be beyond caring after gathering such large amounts of wealth and more importantly power.

During this time the standard of living would of reduced dramatically, many developed countries will probably start to resemble 1970's England unemployment and poverity will be rife and Humanity will have lost about 30-40 years progress for the sake of making a few men extremley wealthy.

Ok these are scenario's, and i'm in a gloomy mood, but you get the idea. If Goverments were serious (especially the US - which is being run by Texas let us not forget, the home of oil billionaires), then we'd probably resolve the issue, or at least spend more money on it.

Let's drill that darn oil, now!

I'm all for alternative energy, but that oil would be very useful.

Not necessarily.

Once it is established that the US will consume its own oil in a few years, current producers have to cope with a customer who will less from them in the future.

That would create competition between current producers because each of them will have to sell as much as they can in the remaining time.

Regardless of all the nonsense, there is no reason we should not be consuming our own resources.  Showing people like OPEC that we are willing to take other measures will be good enough.