THE COMING AMERICAN ENERGY
INDEPENDENCE
by Chriss Street
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The United States is on track to achieve independence from imported
Middle East oil within the next seven years due to the boom in domestic and
North American energy development.
Consequently, the United States would have eventually ratcheted down
our huge military presence in the Middle East defending oil imports. But just like television scenes of the
attack on the .
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United States embassy during the 1968 TET Offensive destroyed public support for the Viet Nam War, last week’s television images of protests against American embassies has devastated public support for a continuing military presence in the Middle East. The American public will soon demand a crash program to exploit domestic energy resources to facilitate a Middle East withdrawal
American
Exceptionalism’s military and economic triumphs in the first half of the 20th
Century were directly attributable to secure domestic access to immense amounts
of oil. President Coolidge wrote in 1924 after WW I; “the supremacy of nations may be determined
by the possession of available petroleum and its products.” During World War II, the United States domestic gasoline output for the military grew
18 times and the production of aviation fuel jumped by 80 times.
Half the total weight of supplies shipped overseas to U.S. allies during
the war consisted of petroleum products.
Following defeat of
Germany’s Afrika Corps in 1943, Middle East oil resources were rapidly
commercialized. After the war, massive
new volumes of cheap Middle East oil froze the world price of oil at between $2.77 and $3.60 a barrel from 1948 to 1972.
During period, American domestic production withered and the bulk of
U.S. oil refining capacity was relocated to coastal ports on the Gulf of
Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific.
On December 2, 1970, just as oil prices were
about to climb, Congress passed the Environmental Protection Agency,
which had a huge negative financial impact on domestic oil industry. The number
operating oil refineries in the U.S. fell from 301 in 1970 to 134 today. Land-based
oil production fell from 9.6 million barrels a day in 1970 to only 5.1 million in 2005. Even with new off-shore production in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, total U.S.
domestic oil production fell from 10.8 million barrels a day in 1980 down to 8.3
million barrels in 2005. To cover the shortfall as demand continued
to grow; imports rose from 1.3 million barrels a day in 1970, providing
12% of supply to a peak at over 12 million barrels in 2005, accounting for 63% of all U.S.
oil supply.
But since 2008,
fracking and other new drilling technologies have fostered a domestic 25% surge in oil production and a 40% jump in
natural gas production. driven down Demand for imported oil has fallen
to less than 45% of supply, the lowest level since 1997.
Cheap new supplies from Canadian tar sands drove down imports of Middle East oil to less than 10% of
U.S. supply.
Radical Islam’s
coordinated attacks against American embassies across the Middle East has
fractured the region’s respect for U.S. military power and emboldened our
enemies. Taliban forces this weekend
brazenly penetrated the perimeter of a the joint U.S.
and British air base in Afghanistan, blew up 6 Marine Harrier “jump jets” and
killed one of the Marine’s highest decorated Air Squadron Leader.
After NATO forces suffered their 51st murder by an
Afghanistan government forces, the U.S. military suspended all operations with
patrolling with Afghan troops.
In 1968, President
Lyndon Johnson claimed a military victory as American and South Vietnam forces
slaughtered ten times as many Viet Cong as they lost in the TET Offensive. But bloody television images of the battle
at the U.S. embassy in Saigon convinced Americans that the Vietnamese could
never be pacified. Similar television
images of anti-American violence in the Middle East have convinced the American
public that the Middle East cannot be pacified.
The American public
will soon politically coalesce around a major increase in domestic energy
exploration and development, in order to facilitate the elimination of reliance
on imported Middle East oil.
Fortunately, America has technology and resource potential to rapidly
make this initiative a reality.
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