The Absurdity of Energy Independence

Tuesday, 19th May 2009

Of all the fatuous "debates" in Washington few can be as absurd or wearisome as the mantra, repeated by politicians of all parties, that it is time for the United States to wean itself off foreign oil and declare "energy independence". Writing about the discovery of oil in Ghana, Foreign Policy's Elizabeth Dickinson makes some fair points but, alas, also trots out a familiar refrain: "Wouldn't it be nice to buy oil from a country with a relatively clean record in human rights, governance, and economic management?"

You'd never think that last year just 18% of US oil imports came from the Persian Gulf would you? Or that a mere 46% of US imports came from OPEC states? You probably know that Canada is by far the biggest exporter of oil to the US, but did you know that Britain sold the US more oil in 2008 than Kuwait? Well we did.

Now in some sense it doesn't much matter where the oil comes from* and there are decent grounds for wanting to use less of the stuff. But the notion that US dollars spent on oil only go to an assortment of vile regimes around the world, none of whom wish the US well is a nonsense that naturally, being such, is widely believed. So, stop dissing Canada, right? And Mexico. And all the other countries that sell oil on the international market...

*Though of course Saudi Arabia can cause trouble for everyone by (further?) distorting global oil prices. But that's not, I think, quite the same thing.

Filed under: Oil (25 more articles) , Washington (169 more articles)

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Rhoda Klapp

May 20th, 2009 7:27am Report this comment

It makes a lot of sense to use up foreign oil first, so you still have your own. Unfortunately that is not the plan in the US right now, where oil is wicked. Maybe one day a future president will be glad the US is stuffed with untapped oil.

Forlornehope

May 20th, 2009 8:54am Report this comment

The best piece of work on this that I have come across is from Amory Lovins's Rocky Mountain Institute. "Winning the Oil Endgame" is a detailed analysis of how the US can move to a post oil economy. You can download a copy here:

http://nc.rmi.org/Page.aspx?pid=269&srcid=269

An equally if not more important work on this subject but UK focused is by Prof. David MacKay, a physicist from Cambridge. He works through the options for a sustainable energy future for the UK. Interestingly one conclusion is that we will probably need to import solar generated electricity from North Africa. This is also available as a download from here:

http://www.withouthotair.com/Contents.html

Fundamentally these are engineering problems. The political challenge is how to make it all happen.

Chris

May 20th, 2009 10:33am Report this comment

Alex Massie is dead right that it doesn't matter where the US's oil comes from.

As oil may be transported cheaply over very long distances (unlike natural gas), there is a something very close to a world market, so if the US buys only from nice people the bad guys will just sell their oil to someone else and nothing will really change.

To add to Forlornehope's list of references, I'd recommend Carbonomics by Stephen Stoft, available free at
http://stoft.com/p/carbonomics.html
In this, he makes the point that what can be done is to reduce demand and hence the world oil price using taxation - one justification given for this is that it's better for a high price at the pump to be either displacing other taxation, or being refunded directly to taxpayers, than going to OPEC or western Big Oil.

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