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Did a little number crunching.
The Sasol Plant processes 160,000 barrels of oil for every 120,000 tons of coal put in.
That's 1⅓ barrel of oil per ton.
American coal power plants consumed 1.05 billion tons of coal last year, enough to produce exact 1.4 billion barrels of oil a year, or 20% of our current oil consumption.
We have an estimated 264 billion tons of coal in recoverable reserves, and a total of 491 billion tons in reserves.
We consumed 7.55 billion barrels of oil last year, of which we produced 3.04 billion barrels.
Build nuke plants, take the coal plants offline, convert the coal currently being used to generate electricity into oil.
That makes 4.26 billion barrels of oil produced domestically, or 56.4% of total consumption.
We import 1.23 billion barrels of oil from Canada and Mexico a year.
Add this to the figure from domestic oil production and possible oil production from coal, and we arrive at 5.5 billion barrels a year produced in NAFTA countries, or 73% of total oil consumption.
If we add in the Virgin Islands, the UK, Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia, friendly or nearby countries, from whom we import 400 million barrels a day, we come to 5.9 billion barrels of oil imported/produced in NAFTA and friendly countries, or 78% of total oil consumption.
Double coal production, convert it into oil (an additional 1.4 billion barrels), and we get 7.3 billion barrels, or 96.7% of total oil consumption.
An extra 190 million tons of coal would get us to 100%. Not a drop of oil from the Middle East, Africa, or Venezuela.
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The Buck Stops Here
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