In 1973, the United States imported 30% of the crude oil it used. By 1977, imports had risen to 44% of consumption. Then, following a mini-boom in the development of marginal fields that had been made practical by the high oil prices of the late 1970s, imports dropped off to just 25% in 1985.
Since then, imports as a percent of domestic use have been in an almost steady uptrend.They now account for 66% of total domestic crude oil consumed.If the trend were to continue at the rate of the last two decades, in 2028 the U.S. would be totally dependent on imported oil.
Of course, the import trend won't continue in a straight line to 2028, because production is now declining in the rest of the world. In 2004 the U.S. imported 600 million barrels of oil per year from Mexico. By 2012, total Mexican production will have declined to only 180 million barrels per year, and none of it will be available for export to the U.S. or anywhere else.
Factor # 2: The Big Green NO
If oil is destined to be scarcer, common sense tells us to look for alternatives. But for the Green extremists, only certain "clean" alternatives are worth considering.
The Greens demand that fossil fuels be abandoned in favor of sources that are cleaner and renewable. That immediately excludes coal, which is a giant exclusion. At current consumption rates, the U.S has more than 250 years of the dirty black stuff. That's more energy than the entire world reserves of recoverable oil. But the Obama administration plans to phase out coal, because it's been tagged as a global warming villain. The cap-and-trade bill that recently squeaked though the House of Representatives is part of that plan. Approval by the Senate would push the U.S. deeper into the energy scarcity hole.
The Green agenda favors solar power, wind power, geothermal energy, and hydropower (provided no fish are inconvenienced). The Greens also like ethanol, even though producing a gallon of ethanol eats more energy than a gallon of ethanol will produce. In the last decade, 160 ethanol plants have been built in the U.S., but only because of expensive subsidies from taxpayers.
The Green agenda isn't looking for marginal changes, improvements here and there, or a mere tidying up of the energy industry. Given the prominence of fossil fuels as energy sources, what the Greens are seeking is a wrenching revolution.
Here's where we are now:
The Green agenda calls for the "87%" to be replaced by "%."((0%?)) It's not going to happen, but part of the Green effort to move things in that direction is political opposition to the development of fossil fuel sources. That opposition will worsen the scarcity of oil.
Meanwhile, it will take decades for alternative energy sources to even begin to offset the decline in oil production. T. Boone Pickens argues that by investing $1 trillion to build wind facilities in the corridor from Texas to North Dakota between now and 2020, we could produce 20% of the nation's electricity. And that, he contends, would free up our vast natural gas resources to be used as fuel for truck fleets and ultimately automobiles. Perhaps he's right. Perhaps he's completely right. But it will take eleven years to prove it.
And nuclear? Even though it substitutes for fossil fuels, don't expect the Greens to allow nuclear energy to come to the rescue. Currently, 104 nuclear reactors generate 20% of the electricity in the U.S. But they were all built before 1982. Because of a slow and brutally expensive regulatory process and because of latent political hostility, any undertaking to build a new plant and bring it on line would take ten years. There are some dissenters on this point among the enviro-fundamentalists, but for Greens generally, nuclear power is forbidden fruit.
Factor # 3: Neglect of Infrastructure
The infrastructure for producing petroleum products is rusting away and falling apart.
