A Saudi Royal Talks About Oil … IndependenceIt’s not often that a member of the Saudi royal family agrees with me, but in January I posted a blog that said “energy independence” wasn’t feasible and claiming America could achieve it wasn’t desirable. And now Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to Washington DC, has told editors and reporters at The Washington Times the exact same thing.
“Politicians, when they do that (claim energy independence is achievable), I think they are misleading their publics,” Prince Turki said.
He is right, and while many people will think Prince Turki is being self serving – the Saudis are, after all, the world’s largest oil producers – the fact is that the American public would not stand for the energy price increases that would result if we somehow managed to quickly wean ourselves off of oil or natural gas imports and relied on renewable energy as our dominant energy supply source. Currently renewable energies such as wind and solar – which are far more expensive than the three major fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas – meet about 2 percent of our domestic energy needs.
But the larger point is that energy independence is the wrong goal. Energy security is the proper goal and to achieve that we need more, not less, diversity of supply. That means we need as many kinds of energy supplies as possible, including more liquefied natural gas (LNG), and we need as many suppliers as possible. In other words, to achieve energy security, we need to establish a global energy industry in which as many buyers interact with as many sellers as possible.
Another problem is that when our politicians talk about achieving “energy independence,” it isn’t just the public they mislead. It is also the suppliers. In an interview with American Gas magazine, global energy expert and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin points out that, on the one hand our political leaders continually encourage energy producers such as the Saudis to increase their energy production and exports, while on the other hand these same politicians keep talking about energy independence. “That is a confusing message for energy-producing nations,” Yergin says.
He is right, too.
A Saudi Prince, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and me. Some days (to coin a phrase) this job is a “gas.”
RWB makes an interesting point about including the military costs of the U.S. presence in the Middle East when talking about the price of oil and natural gas because — our diplomatic goals notwithstanding — our presence in that region has a great deal to do with the fact that, as Willie Sutton said about money and banks, “that’s where the oil (and natural gas) is.”
No question — factoring in the costs of protecting and ensuring our access to Middle East oil and gas, including protecting the sea lanes that deliver it, would make our dependence on those supplies look much more expensive — ironically I made that very point in an article I wrote for AGA’s flagship publication, American Gas magazine, some 15 years ago. But until it is feasible and economically practical — and cost effective — to significantly increase our reliance on alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power, we will keep on paying that cost. And even then, I don’t see us weaning ourselves off of energy imports for many, many decades to come.
One other point: Because we are the world’s one and only superpower, possessing by far the largest navy in the world, we would have a presence in or around the Middle East regardless of our foreign energy dependence. Our presence brings a measure of stability to the region in the same way that American troops under NATO’s flag historically brought a measure of stability to Western Europe. And for the past 50 years we have been chiefly responsible for protecting the sea lanes over which global trade has moved. My point is that not all of the military costs of our Middle East presence should factored into the “energy dependence” balance sheet.
I basically agree that the cost of energy independence would, given the current state of technology, be impossible or, at the very least, extremely costly and inconvenient.
But that said, when we calculate the cost of energy independence, we would want to include the military and political benefits that would derive from not importing oil–no longer would we have to keep soldiers and sailors in the Mideast, and probably we would no longer fight wars there. That’s a huge savings in blood and treasure. Likewise, we would benefit by not shoveling money into the treasuries of various thugs, dictators, kleptocrats, radicals, etc. Al Quaeda would have a much more difficult time financing their deeds without U.S. dollars circulating in the Mideast.
Gaining and maintaining energy security, on the other hand, commits us militarily to the Mideast and commits us as well to propping up ultra-corrupt petro-dictatorships.
I don’t think we can become energy independent, but for the reasons above, but I wish we could.