From the Fact Check Desk: Are Obama's Claims About Inflating Car Tires Accurate?

I'm a little confused. Kevin and one other person has asserted some strange beliefs that one barrel of oil (42 gallons) winds up with either 12 or 19.6 gallons of gas.

If one barrel is 12 gallons, and a barrel was recently selling for $147, then gas would sell at a wholesale price of $12.25.

If one barrel is 20 gallons, and a barrel was recently selling for $147, then gas would wholesale for $7.50 a gallon.

Since none of these figures include allowances for taxes (about $ 0.50 a gallon or more) or dealer markups (surprisingly low, I think about $ 0.20 a gallon) it seems like they have to be wrong because at the time oil was $147 a barrel, gas was actually selling at retail in most places for $3.99 a gallon.

Right now, with oil at around $120/bbl, and gas at about $ 3.90 a gallon, a barrel must yield at least 30 gallons. Subtract out approximate taxes and markup and you get about $3.30 a gallon or about 36.36 gallons per barrel.

Since there are also refining costs and wholesaler and oil company profits to add, I come to the conclusion that it's extremely likely that the exchange price is based on usable gasoline and not simply unrefined crude oil.

Or perhaps anything that's taken out is replaced by additives put in, like the 10% ethanol that's now in most gas.

So if I were making any estimates of savings, I would use the full 42 gallons per barrel of oil.

One point often left out of arguments like this is that we only know the oil we explore. We look for oil, and when we find it, it's recorded. If we are not going to drill offshore, we will not look for it there. So you will know the actual volume of oil produced, whether offshore or in ANWR, only when you open it up for exploration.

This is why you hear the two sides arguing "There are billions of gallons in ANWR, why don't we explore it" and "There's not enough oil in ANWR to fill a teacup". The reality is that it's likely that there are huge amounts of oil in ANWR but we will not know for sure until we go there and find out. The first guy is using his best guess as to how much is down there, the second guy is using only official, "proven" figures. The truth is likely to be in between, but likely to be far, far higher than the pessimist.

Personally, I'd like to see a common sense solution to this problem: Let the individual state governments decide, in conjunction with those who live there. In the case of Alaska. this would mean ANWR would be opened up for exploration almost immediately. The handful of people masochistic enough to live up there in the cold would have their lives dramatically improved for the better by drilling revenues.

The people who say how much they love the pristine wilderness will never come there to visit, and there are good reasons for this.

Even during the summer it is bone-chillingly cold, and there are no Whole Foods Markets or Four Seasons Hotels to make your visit pleasant. If you are truly insane or curious enough to want to come up there, the handful of available tours cost more than $10,000 per week, and conditions are such that they all but require physical examinations to make sure you're going to be able to make it back.

Trust me, if you want natural beauty you'll find more on Richard Branson's Necker Island or, if you insist on not spending $50,000 a week, Bermuda.

California and Florida might still be forever restricted from drilling under this scenerio. Their diversified economies are sufficiently vibrant so that drilling would not make the lottery winner impact it would on ANWR.

I believe Governor Swarzenegger happens to own a home in Pacific Palisades valued in the millions of dollars and I can't blame him if he doesn't want to see an oil rig as part of his sweeping ocean view. If I had that kind of money and view I might feel the same way. Although when I did live in Santa Barbara with an ocean view, I actually liked seeing the oil rigs with their twinkling lights offsetting the dark of the ocean at night. So maybe we should ask him to give rigs a chance. Might even grow on him.

Oil drilling technology has improved and it would not surprise me if oil companies and drilling opponents could make a fair accommodation. Here in Pennsylvania we have side drilling for natural gas and it's barely visible on the surface. Technology marches on.

D

If I had any faith that Obama regularly checks the air pressure in his own tires I might give some credence to his statement. However, I doubt he has even driven his own car since he became a Senator - and may not even own a car, for that matter.

This is just another classic example of a Limousine Liberal preaching to the "little people", sort of an updated version of "Let them eat cake!" (the difference being, the latter story is a myth: Marie Antoinette wasn't dumb enough to say something like that. But Obama was.) I'd like to ask Barry if a 65-year old grandmother, who can't afford to use a full service gas station on the pitance Social Security provides, is supposed to get down on her knees once a week and check the pressure in her tires, or if Mr. Obama will volunteer to do it for her?

Kevin said:

"Every gallon saved through conservation, equals roughly 4 gallons of crude oil. "

The hyperbole is getting a bit ridiculous here. Can we cease and desist?

Obama never said a word about tune ups (which as several have pointed out aren't done any more), and they assumed that everyone has underinflated tires, which is clearly contradicted by their own data, and then they use the most pessimistic estimates of OCS capacity, to arrive at a desired conclusion that is ludicrous.

Please...

The only way that you can accurately and properly inflate your tires is to do it when they are cold, after you drive to the gas station they have warmed up and you can no longer get the correct pressure. Check your owners manual. Now that means the first thing everyone will have to do is put a compressor in their garage so they can check the pressure and then inflate their tires. Of course you could drive to the nearest tire inflation station and let you car sit for several hours while the tires cool down. By the way you need to buy your own tire gauge because the ones in gas stations are usually off by several pounds because of the abuse they receive. Is this practical or even doable? I think not but it does show how little Obama knows about this subject, but is still ready to shoot off his mouth. (And yes I do have a compressor in my garage and yes I do check and inflate my tires when they are cold.)

I'm highly skeptical of the claimed savings for both tuneups and tire pressures. For one, the there is no way the gas mileage savings on tire pressure would be linear.

I suspect these "facts" were established many years ago without any rechecking.

I do know that I track my gas mileage. My tires were under inflated last fall. Inflated them did nothing to mileage. I got a full tuneup in February. Did nothing to mileage, though my brakes work great now. Bottom line to me is that Honda Civics are damn good cars and Kumho tires damn good tires.

With the 10% ethanol blend gasoline, you get 3% less gas mileage, so it's the alternative idiots solution to the other problem they caused.

I don't think any car made in the last 20 years needs a "tuneup" any time before 100,000 miles. The last car I owned with a carburator was made in 1984 and the last car with points and condensor, as opposed to electronic ignition was in the early 1970's.

This shows how out of touch Obama is. His limo driver takes care of that sutff for him. Most American men understand about oil changes, inflating tires, etc already and don't need Obama's handlers making it sound like they invented the wheel.

I suggest the decline in crude prices is the result of "discovering" a few days before Bush's action, that the US driving public had reduced fuel consumption a little more than 2% in the last few months and gasoline inventories were increasing surprisingly rapidly.

Its also worth noting that this was a throwaway line from Obama-its not like tire gauges are part of his energy plan in any meaningful sense-this debate has nothing to do with the primary difference between Obama and McCain-which in a nutshell is Obama: financial incentives for renewable energy and large scale efficiency improvements at the expense of oil and gas exploration vs. McCain: government money focused on increased drilling and nuclear power. The end.
This debate is about Obama making a comment about how little oil (compared to the amount we use) is left to be drilled on the contenental shelf (according to most estimates).

Kevin,
I think that you are onto something here, although I believe that you stopped short of totaling all the relevant factors.
If we are going to discuss the savings from tire inflation, you need to factor in the costs to operate the air hose and the gas station that hosts said air hose(and of course building, supplying and powering up all the necessary manpower, offices, computers, etc. necessary to run such an operation).
Of course, tune ups bear there own respective cost structure that indeed parallels that of the air hose.
Kevin, I'm just not smart enough to put that all together coherently here in this comment, but I'm fairly certain that in addition to conservation, our petroleum based economy could use some more oil.

Here's a major problem your conclusions that I spotted right off the bat. This is part of what you wrote:

"Since American drivers use roughly 380 million gallons of gasoline (not including diesel) per day, an 18% improvement translates into a savings of 68 million gallons, or 1.62 million barrels of oil per day."

NO, nope, not even close! 68 million gallons of gasoline is roughly equal to about 3.4 million barrels of oil per day. Crude oil (of the higher grades, known as "light/sweet" because of its low sulfur/acid content only converts to gasoline at a rate of about 20 gallons of gas, per 42 gallon barrel of crude.

Secondly, you are not factoring in at all, the amount of energy required (expended) in exploration, drilling, building rigs and drilling machinery, transporting it to the site, drilling (and of course building, supplying and powering up all the necessary manpower, offices, computers, etc. necessary to run such an operation), pumping, transporting, refining, transporting to the blender and finally to the gas stations for the end consumer.

The DOE says that means that you only, in terms of net energy balance, end up with about 43% of the energy content contained originally in that crude oil.

Thus, for every 42 gallon barrel of oil, you end up with about 10 gallons of Net energy product in the form of gasoline.

I knew you didn't know what you were talking about when you equated a direct linear constant between crude oil and gasoline in that sentence. Unless you factor in the energy required to acquire that crude, transport it, refine it and get it to the consumer in the form of gasoline, you aren't coming close to creating a valid comparison with the idea of conserving the same amount of gasoline.

Every gallon saved through conservation, equals roughly 4 gallons of crude oil. Considering that conservartion would start paying benefits today, it makes your take on this even further off, as it would be years before a single drop of oil would be created from (ANWR as an example) and a total of about 40 years to fully extract the crude from there.

WOW! You guys can debate and figure costs and savings till the cows come home, but the fact remains the cost of maintaining the National Tire Pressure and Engine Tune-up Police Force to guarantee the savings Mr. Obama contends, would far outweigh the savings. I vote we all try to be as responsible as possible and maintain our tire pressure and have regular tune ups not only saving fuel dollars but help to reduce our dependence. But just as speed limits and fines and increased insurance premiums haven't done much to reduce speeding, I don't think the savings in gas will cause every one to rush out and service their cars. So, once more, we need action on the part of our government to save us from ourselves, and those like Mr. Obama who don't really understand us. Drill here, Drill now, Drill the OCS, drill the oil shale, and drill in the ANWR, while the nuclear, clean coal, wind, solar and bio fuel sources can be developed. Although the drilling will take a few years to really produce, any thing we do to conserve now, will have an immediate effect. That includes tax breaks for conservation, by promoting more efficient cars, appliances, new homes, improvements to older homes etc. The signal we send to the markets of our committment to a total energy policy WILL reduce oil prices in the short term.

And when can we get thay OCS if we start today? 2017? So 800,000 per day now, for the next 9 years, is probably greater than what will come on line at that point. You only did 1/2 the calculation. What is the OCS volume as it comes on line? What are estimates?

Great. Most certainly we can maintaing our cars appropriately, but let's not fool ourselves. We can't inflate ourselves out of this.

Using the same logic as the folks that say "all that oil might go overseas anyway", will not our savings from proper inflation be sucked up by overseas interests anyway?

I just don't see how increasing the supply is a bad thing. I'd rather start now.

OK, so as any gearhead knows properly inflating our tires saves us gas. Your guy at fueleconomy.gov says it will save us 800 thousand barrels per day.

The DOE says at "For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher—2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case." That's 200 thousand barrels a day.

So doesn't that mean Obama is right? The DOE estimate for oil gained by off shore drilling in 2030 is 600 thousand barrels less than the 800 thousand barrels we'd easily save today with routine car maintenance?

So many rediculous posts.

McCain supports off-shore drilling and conservation methods in order to lessen our dependancy on foreign oil whil we develop alternative fuels. It will take time to implement new fuels and change our culture and our oil based economy.

Obama thinks tune-ups and properly inflated tires will significantly reduce our oil dependancy so that we can pursue alternative fuels without drilling for new oil. If we decide not to drill, oil futures will skyrocket and we will be paying $10 a gallon within 2-3 years.

With our own oil, we can impose sanctions on Iran without fear of them cutting of 40% of the worlds oil. And after we develop alternative fuels, we will be in position to sell our oil in the world market. With a little competetion, oil prices around the world will fall.

One last thing to the knuckleheads that say "Why aren't the oil compnaies drilling on the rest of the land that is leased to them?". There is no oil there!

Here is a link to a government site that says new drilling would provide only 200,000 barrels a day AT ITS PEAK, which would be in 2030. It also says "any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."

ABC should immediately retract this story, which uses a cheap statistical trick to make someone look bad.

Walter66--The Energy Information Administration (EIA) has produced estimates of the production increase if the restricted areas are opened up. The title of the study is ""Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf."

Production will come on line very slowly, and in the year 2030, the additional production from drilling in the now prohibited Outer Continental Shelf will be 200,000 barrels per day--just about exactly what we'd save if all tires were properly inflated.

According to the EIA, "any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."

Vicki - I'm sure John McCain's several HOMES will be warmer than that, too. Your point?