40% Alberta’s Oil Could Buy The United States of America

MSN compares the price of oil to the net worth of Americans, and concludes that the wealth of America, as measured in barrels of oil, is at an all time low 400 Billion barrels:

At the end of March, for instance, our collective net worth as a nation was $56 trillion, the second straight quarter it had dropped. Divide $56 trillion by the recent $140-a-barrel price of oil and you get 400 billion barrels of oil as the value of America, a fraction of our national value in 1998, 1995 or even 1990.

Either oil is too expensive or America is too cheap.

There’s a nifty little table at that link; you might want to check it out.

From an old CBC link, we see that Alberta has between 1.7 and 2.5 trillion barrels of oil, but we’ll call it 2 trillion.

2 trillion, divided by 400 billion - that’s about 20% of Alberta’s oil. America’s on sale - if we moved now, Alberta could trade its oil for the entire wealth of the United States.

But, the MSN article fails to take into account the 56 trillion in unfunded liabilities of the US government, so we’d have to add that to the original amount, thereby roughly doubling the amount to 40%

Of course, I’m not taking into consideration technical limitations of bringing that oil to market, building upgraders, etc., etc., nor am I considering things from a net present value perspective.

It either goes to show how huge our reserves are, or how small the value of America’s assets and liabilities are. I’d choose the former.