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By Roscoe G. Bartlett
February 7, 2006
President George W. Bush was half right
and half wrong about oil in his State of the Union speech.
"America is addicted to oil, which is often imported
from unstable parts of the world," he said. However,
we can't "break this addiction through technology"
alone. Two words conservatives should champion were missing
from his speech: conservation and efficiency.
Current U.S. energy policy and the President's
Advanced Energy Initiative are too modest and overly focused
on the goal of increasing domestic production of oil and alternatives
to support increasing oil consumption. This is futile and
self-defeating because U.S. oil production is in permanent
decline and world oil production will follow - perhaps disastrously
soon.
American Shell Oil scientist M. King Hubbert
identified "peak oil" in the mid-1950s. He discovered
oil field production follows a bell curve rising to a maximum
capacity, or peak, when about half of the oil is extracted,
after which production declines. U.S. oil production peaked
in 1971 and has declined every year since. The U.S. has only
two percent of world oil reserves. We contribute eight percent
of world production. But we consume 25 percent of world oil
production. We're pumping our reserves four times faster than
the rest of the world. U.S. natural gas production has also
peaked. The United States is now the world's largest importer
of both oil and natural gas. From importing one-third of the
oil we use before the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973, we now import
about two-thirds of the oil we use.
Hubbert was right about the U.S. What about
the world? Oil production is declining in 33 of the world's
48 largest oil-producing countries. Experts agree global peak
oil is inevitable. Many predict it is imminent. Oil prices
have not predicted peak production. Neither high oil prices
nor technological advances have reversed production declines
after peak. Despite periods of high prices and new technologies,
world oil discoveries have steadily declined for 40 years.
With U.S. oil production declining, increasing
oil consumption will make America more dependent upon oil
imports from foreign sources such as Saudi Arabia, Russia,
Nigeria and Venezuela. Increasing oil consumption will increase
competition and potential conflict with other energy consumers,
such as China and India. Increasing oil consumption will make
us less prepared and capable to overcome the inevitable challenges
of global peak oil.
Peak oil will cause a crisis in transportation
because there are no ready liquid fuel substitutes of comparable
quality or quantity. We can't fill gas tanks with coal, wind,
solar or nuclear fuel. A February 2005 report commissioned
by the Department of Energy, Peaking of World Oil Production:
Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management, concluded that a
crash program to produce liquid fuel alternatives at the maximum
feasible rate must start twenty years before peak to avoid
significant supply shortages. Oil prices haven't promoted
those alternatives. In the Wall Street Journal on January
10, 2006, Marc Sumerlin, formerly Deputy Director of President
Bush's National Economic Council, noted that investment in
alternatives to oil was stymied by $20/barrel futures market
prices for oil between 1986 and 2003 and fears of a repeat
of the 1998 plunge down to $10/barrel.
$70/barrel oil and $3.50/gallon gas will seem cheap after
global peak oil. In its September 6, 2005 report, Oil Shockwave,
the National Commission on Energy Policy & Securing America's
Future Energy projected that a sustained four percent global
shortfall in daily oil supply would raise oil prices above
$160 per barrel. Prices that high would inflict a ruinous
worldwide recession.
Technology and alternatives are important.
However, unless we also use less oil, we won't reduce America's
oil imports. Delayed gratification and self-sufficiency are
traditional conservative values. That is why the next conservatism
should champion policy changes to use less, not more oil through
conservation and energy efficiency. Conservatives should recognize
that unless we have a national energy conservation program
with the commitment, breadth and intensity of the Apollo moon
mission and the Manhattan Project to create the atom bomb,
our country is unlikely to achieve the goal of replacing "more
than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by
2025" and even less likely to break our oil addiction.
Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Republican, represents the Sixth District
of Maryland in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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