ANWR, Kuwait, peak oil and ideologues who don't know what they're talking about

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, to borrow a meaningless and trite phrase, is "stuck on stupid" on ANWR and energy policy. Today, it's the speculation that Kuwait has 51 billion fewer barrels than previously thought, or a decrease of more than half:

As I understand it, some of this reflects inflated estimates from past years (I had an item on similar questions about Saudi reserves, and I've seen speculation that Iran has less than it lets on), but of course it's in the interest of these countries to inflate their reserves, thus discouraging additional drilling and competition that might lower prices.

Perhaps this is an argument for not drilling in ANWR and elsewhere in the United States yet -- leave that stuff in the ground for a few decades while consuming Middle East oil now, and eventually we'll be selling oil to them. Or not...

A side note: is every single geopolitical/geological/meteorological event an opportunity to stick it to the French and the Muslims, or are only a few cataclysmic enough to make it worthwhile? The fact that Kuwait has a little less oil than we thought is about as far as Reynolds gets without putting his righty-conventional-wisdom goggles on.

Sure, the argument can be made that Reynolds is simply arguing against ANWR, but I know sarcasm when I see it. Besides, Reynolds' implied opinions aside, the statement itself betrays some ignorance about the reserve.

According to the Energy Information Administration, we imported nearly 308 million barrels of oil in November and produced about 142 million barrels. Refinery inputs totaled about 451 million barrels, which means 9.4 years of American refinery inputs, not counting for any increase or decrease in demand.

The U.S. Geological Survey says this about ANWR:

Technically recoverable oil within the ANWR 1002 area (excluding State and Native areas) is estimated to be between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels (95- and 5-percent probability range), with a mean value of 7.7 billion barrels.

You can blame those estimates on career geologists who hate George Bush and want to stymie him, but I don't think many people will find it convincing outside of your blogroll. Assuming the mean estimated numbers are correct, if they extracted all of the oil out of ANWR all at once, without any waste, it would sate American demand for a year at a half. In other words, the centerpiece of the Cheney energy policy is a margin of error within Kuwait's estimation error. If it comes to the point when the Middle East runs out of oil, the petroleum economy will be more or less gone thanks to market forces and 7.7 billion barrels won't bring it back.

Oil won't ever "run out," simply because it will become far too expensive to use it the way we do now far before the last drop comes out of the ground, wherever and whenever that may be. The question is whether America as a nation wants to stop deluding itself now and pump up the CAFE and R&D, or whether we would prefer to rely on snake oil cures for a few years so the short-sighted oil execs can get the profits in the bank before the golden parachutes are calculated.

UPDATE: Some paragraphs reordered.