SPEAKING
FREELY Get
Saudi: The neo-cons have gone
green By Peter Kiernan
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
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A consequence of
September 11 and US President George W Bush's "war
on terror" has been a challenge to the conspicuous
consumption of oil in the US from an unlikely
source - sections of the Republican president's
very own support base.
The US now imports
more than half its daily oil needs - and accounts
for about one in four barrels of oil consumed
everyday. This thirst for petroleum is
increasingly seen as a national
security risk by
neo-conservative think tanks as well as Republican
politicians and former administration officials.
Even Bush has conceded that the US is
importing greater amounts of oil "from countries
that don't particularly like us".
The fact
that 15 of the 19 terrorists responsible for
September 11 came from Saudi Arabia, the world's
largest oil producer, was a shock to the
five-decade long relationship between Washington
and Riyadh - a relationship that has been the
cornerstone of US strategic interests in the
oil-rich Persian Gulf.
For those ensconced
in the neo-conservative policy heartland, the
House of Saud, rulers of the world's largest
oil-producing nation, showed its true colors with
September 11, and was held responsible, if only
indirectly, for the worst terrorist attack on
American soil. This view is also being echoed by
some politicians, both Democrat and Republican, on
Capitol Hill.
Four years later it's
increasingly argued that growing American
dependence on foreign oil makes these vital
supplies more vulnerable to terrorist attacks by
groups such as al-Qaeda.
But what's worse,
the argument goes, is that the American appetite
for oil finances these terrorist groups -
particularly when oil prices are high like they
are now - as they get funding from sponsors in
oil-rich Middle East nations such as Saudi Arabia,
the major supplier of imported oil to the US. As
one neo-conservative advocate, Frank Gaffney of
the Center for Security Policy (CSP) put it, "We
are funding terrorism with our petro-dollars."
The solution offered is to ditch the
addiction to oil. A group calling itself Set
America Free proposes that the US spend US$12
billion over four years to promote the use of
hybrid vehicles, expand the use of
non-petroleum-based liquid fuels such as ethanol
and continue work on commercializing fuel cell
technology.
Its membership includes a
former director of the Central Intelligence
Agency, James Woolsey (a critic of the Saudis),
and prominent individuals from Washington-based
think tanks that are hawkish on Middle East
policy, such as the CSP, the Hudson Institute and
the Jewish Institute for National Security
Affairs.
In mid-November some Republican
lawmakers joined Democrats in the US Congress to
introduce a bipartisan bill to cut oil consumption
by 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) over the next
10 years - currently the US consumes about 20
million bpd - by advocating some of the proposals
suggested by Set America Free.
At a
hearing conducted November 16 by the US Senate
Foreign Relations Committee on US oil consumption
and national security, James Schlesinger,
secretary of defense during the Nixon
administration, warned that "we shall continue to
be plagued by energy insecurity" until new
technologies can "wean us from our dependence on
oil and gas".
Woolsey also testified at
the hearing, basing his testimony on a recent
paper completed with George Schultz, former
secretary of state during the Reagan
administration, which claimed, "The dangers from
oil dependence in today's world require us both to
look to ways to reduce demand for oil and to
increase supply of transportation fuel by methods
beyond the increase of oil production."
Another group, the nonpartisan Energy
Future Coalition, wrote a letter to Bush in March
asking him to "launch a major new initiative to
curtail US [oil] consumption" as "dependence on
imported petroleum poses a risk to our homeland
security." Among the signatories were Robert
McFarlane, a former national security advisor
during the Reagan administration, and several
retired US military officers.
Yet, the
ambitious push for drastically curbing oil use
hasn't been translated into actual policy by the
White House. The Bush administration still
emphasizes the expansion of domestic supplies in
the vain hope that this will substantially reduce
the flow of oil imports. And despite the shock of
September 11, US-Saudi ties remain in place, if
somewhat weakened.
Meanwhile, an energy
bill passed earlier this year by the US congress
included only very modest initiatives or
incentives to encourage the use of more
fuel-efficient vehicles and provide for greater
consumption of non-petroleum sources of transport
fuel.
But would cutting American oil
consumption undermine Middle Eastern oil producers
either hostile or ambiguous toward Western
interests and cut the flow of funds to groups such
as al-Qaeda? Maybe, but it's a long shot. The US
is actually much less dependent on Middle East oil
than are Europe and Japan. According to the US
Energy Information Administration, about 22% of US
net oil imports come from Persian Gulf states in
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries,
compared to 30% in Western Europe and 76% in
Japan.
Persian Gulf producers are also
primed to supply India's and China's ravenous
appetites for oil as well, two rapidly emerging
economies, which respectively are already the
second- and sixth-largest consumers of oil in the
world today. Therefore, the centrality of the
Persian Gulf in supplying the entire global oil
market will not vanish with reduced US oil demand
alone.
As long as the world needs oil,
more and more of it is going to come from the
Middle East. The region has nearly two-thirds of
the world's oil reserves - Saudi Arabia, Iraq,
Iran and Kuwait alone have a little more than half
- and the International Energy Agency says about
44% of the world's oil produced in 2030 will come
from the Middle East and North Africa, up from 35%
in 2004. Meanwhile US oil import dependence
continues to grow. The US Energy Information
Administration forecasts that by 2025 Americans
will be importing more than two-thirds of their
oil needs, up from 56% today.
It would
take a huge commitment, both in implementing
policy and in providing the dollars to back it up,
for the world's major oil-consuming nations to
wean themselves off oil as the major source of
energy for transport. Meantime, dependence in the
industrialized world on the Middle East for
petroleum steadily increases.
Still, the
momentum for wanting to kick the oil habit seems
to be growing. A top Republican Senator, Richard
Lugar, lamented recently at a congressional
hearing on oil and national security that
petroleum dependence is pushing the US "toward an
economic disaster that could mean diminished
living standards, increased risks of war and
environmental degradation".
The argument
that growing American dependence on oil imports is
endangering national security is gaining more
traction in Washington policy circles, paving the
way for a potential shift in US policy toward the
Middle East. With politicians and pundits from
both the left and right now beating the
conservation drum, Saudi Arabia must be at least
quietly concerned.
Peter Kiernan is an
associate covering energy and Middle East issues
at AALC, limited company, a business consulting
firm in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area.
(Copyright 2005 Peter Kiernan)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
