Domestic Energy Facts

The United States is the world’s third-largest producer of oil and second-largest producer of natural gas. Prospects for future production from domestic oil and gas basins remain promising yet challenging. Making optimal use of available domestic oil and gas resources is key to ensuring adequate supplies of energy for American consumers.

The 30 member states of IOGCC recognize that the nation’s large endowment of strategic unconventional fuels, including heavy oil, tar sands, oil shale and resources suitable for carbon dioxide enhanced recovery provide opportunities for the development of regional, basin-oriented strategies that will increase domestic oil and gas supplies. Each of these basins has unique geological, economic, institutional and environmental characteristics and approaches that require different solutions.

Resource Overview

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The United States is estimated to have nearly 1,900 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of undeveloped domestic natural gas resources that could be technically recoverable. This includes undiscovered natural gas resources and a large volume of unconventional natural gas resources such as tight, coalbed and shale natural gas.  
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 The United States is estimated to have more than 400 to 1,200 billion barrels of undeveloped, technically recoverable oil. These resources include undiscovered oil, “stranded” light oil amenable to enhanced oil recovery, unconventional oil resources such as the Bakken shale, deep heavy oil and tar sands, new petroleum concepts such as residual oil in reservoir transition zones, and potentially recoverable oil shale resources.