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Posted on  

March 18, 2003

Energy security requires domestic solutions

Sunday, March 16, 2003

Continued turmoil in the Middle East reminds us once again of the necessity to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. Yes, pursuing terrorists and shoring up our homeland defenses are vital. But protecting ourselves against a catastrophic cutoff in oil supplies is essential to the smooth running of our economy.

The Arab countries under which most of the world's oil lies are seething with discontent. No one can predict what might lead to a disruption in oil supplies, or whether war with Iraq might trigger terrorist attacks against oil fields and facilities in the region and beyond.

If push comes to shove, could we do without oil supplies from abroad? Not a chance. America consumes almost 19 million barrels of oil every day, and produces fewer than 8 million. The balance comes from overseas suppliers, with imports accounting for about 60 percent of daily consumption today compared with 47 percent 10 years ago. A bit less than one-quarter of that oil comes from the Persian Gulf region, and the volume is growing.

We are dependent not only on those countries from which we buy oil directly. Oil is a fungible product, and so a shutdown in production in any major oil producing country, even one from which we buy little oil, will affect the price and availability of oil in the United States. In other words, U.S. oil security is part and parcel of world oil security.

To say that the politically volatile Middle East, which accounts for about a third of world oil production and two-thirds of known reserves, is not a safe place is an understatement. Over the past 30 years, we have suffered Middle East supply disruptions caused by the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. For the United States, the danger is that war with Iraq could threaten oil fields in neighboring countries.

Plainly, we need to expand America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And President Bush has said he wants to increase the reserve from its current level of 600 million barrels to 700 million barrels, enough to supply U.S. needs for over a month. His new budget request to Congress would provide almost $200 million to meet that goal. Congress should take prompt action to fill the reserve. This would be used quickly if an oil disruption threatened the nation's economy.

Longer term, by scaling back our reliance on oil from the Persian Gulf we could reduce a major cause of anti-American feeling while simultaneously lessening our vulnerability to oil cutoffs and price spikes. We can broaden our sources of oil by getting more from Latin America, Africa and the Caspian Sea region of the former Soviet Union.

We can expand the use of alternative energy sources, making greater use of clean-coal technology and nuclear power, since electricity can be substituted for the direct burning of oil in industry and transportation. We could also tap renewable energy sources like solar and wind power even more as their costs drop.

But the current attractiveness of nuclear power is working to bring it back into vogue. All indicators of safety and performance at nuclear plants around the country have gone up steadily since the early 1980s. Nuclear energy now supplies 36 percent of Pennsylvania's electricity and 20 percent of the nation's power.

Steady improvements in the efficiency of nuclear plants led to the production of an estimated 778 million megawatt-hours of electricity last year, compared with 769 million megawatt-hours in 2001 and 557 million megawatt-hours in 1990. As a result of this additional output, nuclear power in the United States continues to grow, and it has added the equivalent of 24 large power plants since 1990. This growth must be considered remarkable, given that there hasn't been an order for a new nuclear plant in this country since 1978.

Coal is affordable, supplies are plentiful, and the United States possesses more than 240 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves, or about one-fourth of the world's total. We have a greater share of the world's coal than Saudi Arabia does of the world's oil. The supply could last as long as 300 years at current usage levels. Pennsylvania alone has a reserve base of 28.6 billion tons.

And it should be clear by now that we ought to make some sacrifices for the common good. Improving the fuel efficiency of motor vehicles is an essential part of the solution. On top of that, we need more vehicles that don't rely on gasoline made from oil. Cars powered by batteries or fuel cells might not be practical or affordable yet, but there are several large discernable research and development programs all over the country moving us in that direction, as we seek alternatives to the internal combustion engine. And President Bush in his State of the Union address signaled his support for these programs.

The tenuousness of our current energy situation argues for a much more stimulative public policy that will encourage and lead to a balanced mix of energy sources that are more under America's control. Congress must not ignore the need for a sound energy policy and must act decisively on energy legislation. We are fundamentally dealing with the security of this nation.
 

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