Topic: Oilfield Math

[Bigred]

Actually Using your numbers;

Starting from the 224 Million gallons of gas,

You get about 45% of a barrel of oil into gasoline (actually it varies, and some crude you may only get 5% gasoline from it, but from what I understand it averages close to 45% overall), 42 Gallons in a barrel, comes out to about 11.8 million barrels of oil saved.

So @ $70 per barrel - $826 million per year

$3 Billion Spent in one year, $826 million saved - it will pay itself off in about 3.6 years.

Or we spent $3.63 for every dollar saved.

But this was just one aspect, Instead of selling those cars to Mexico or some other country, we destroyed them.  We actually destroyed somthing that had value, so we lost even more money.

Cash for Clunkers = bad idea

[Paul Mckelvey]

that sounds about right. im moving to canada

[vegaskiller73]

Oilfield Math
      Working in the oilfield with others such as myself and a wealth of 
      combined experience we understand the accuracy of the following.   
     
      Think of it this way:                                               

      A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800       
      gallons of gas a year.                                             
                                                                           
      A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480       
      gallons a year.                                                     
                                                                           
      So, the average 'Cash for Clunkers' transaction will reduce US       
      gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per vehicle, per year.                                                     
                                                                           
      They claim 700,000 vehicles so that's 224 million gallons saved per 
      year.                                                               
                                                                           
      That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.               
      5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.         
                                                                           
      More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs 
      about $350 million dollars. So, the government paid $3 Billion of   
      our tax dollars to save $350 million.                               
                                                                           
      We spent $8.57 for every dollar we saved.                           
                                                                           
      I'm pretty sure they will do a much better job with our health care, though.