New IER Report Details America’s Unrivaled Oil, Gas, And Coal Riches

A new report by the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a nonprofit dedicated to the study of the impacts of government regulation on global energy resources, finds that US inventories of oil and natural gas have experienced stunning growth since 2011. The same report, the North American Energy Inventory 2024, finds the US also leading the world in coal resources, with a total proven resource more than 53% bigger than China’s.

Despite years of record production levels and almost a decade of curtailed investment in the finding and development of new reserves forced by government regulation and discrimination by ESG-focused investment houses, America’s technically recoverable resource in oil grew by 15% from 2011 to 2024. Now standing at 1.66 trillion barrels, the US resource is 5.6 times the proved reserves held by Saudi Arabia.

The story for natural gas is even more amazing: IER finds the technically recoverable resource for gas expanded by 47% in just 13 years, to a total of 4.03 quadrillion cubic feet. At current US consumption rates, that’s enough gas to supply the country’s needs for 130 years.