The United States needs "to wean ourselves of our oil habit," Melanie Kenderdine, a former senior advisor to Clinton administration Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, told an audience of law enforcement officials, security consultants and defense contractors at a homeland security conference.
Kenderdine pointed out that 57 percent of the world's oil reserves are in the Middle East, and that almost all of the world's excess production capacity -- the key to controlling and limiting price spikes -- is in Saudi Arabia, a country in which al Qaida cells remain active, as evidenced by the three coordinated suicide bomb attacks against Westerners there this week.
Jim Woolsey, who was director of the CIA during the Clinton administration, agreed, saying of the Middle East, "We have a very serious problem in this part of the world."
Both argued that increasing domestic production of oil -- or reducing the proportion of U.S oil imports from the Middle East -- would not solve the problem. Because of the globalized nature of the international petroleum market, the United States would still be vulnerable to price spikes and supply fluctuations that might be caused by instability in the region.
"The point is dependence on oil itself," said Woolsey.
But Barry K. Worthington, of the U.S. Energy Association, said that it would require "transforming changes" in technology and lifestyles to dent the country's reliance on oil. "We're not in a position today to become completely independent of foreign oil," he said. Whether one liked it or not, he added, "That's clearly the reality ... in the last 30 years our reliance on imported petroleum has increased."
Based in Washington, USEA is an association of public and private energy-related organizations.
He suggested that this was inevitable, given the gap between the country's resource base and its consumption, "We have three percent of the world's petroleum supplies and use 25 percent of its energy..."
Worthington said, "We as consumers have come to expect and believe that there's going to be an inexhaustible supply of cheap energy, and our economy, the spatial arrangement of our cities ... our whole lifestyle is built around that."
"They (consumers) need to grow up," Woolsey retorted.
Woolsey and Kenderdine agreed that new technologies could help to reduce the U.S. dependence on oil. Woolsey argued that transformative technologies like hydrogen-powered vehicles would take too long to develop. Instead the focus should be on already-developed alternatives that could be used in existing automobiles and power plants with only minor modifications -- like ethanol made from biomass and diesel oil made from coal.
"The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal," he said, citing the country's huge reserves.
Kenderdine suggested that one key to developing new technologies was to insulate research and development funding from the annual congressional appropriations process, which made companies nervous that they would be left hanging, and lose their investment, if the political climate changed.
Worthington argued that there was a trade off between security and affordability in energy. "We could have dramatically improved energy security situation if we were prepared to deal with either lack of abundance or higher prices."
But he seemed skeptical that the revolution in either technology or consumption would come quickly.
"Are these (terrorist) incidents going to motivate us to have a dramatic spring forward in American ingenuity, something comparable with putting a man on the moon?" He asked. Would they "cause a (total) re-thinking of the American lifestyle?"
Woolsey argued that an awareness of the need to meet what he called the "extraordinarily difficult challenge" posed by the war on terror, would motivate consumers to change their behavior.
"We are at war, probably for decades ... If that doesn't get people's attention, I don't know what will," he said, adding, "To the degree that people are not able to see it now, I guarantee you, more and more will when the next terrorist attack (happens).
It depends on how many terrorist attacks its going to take," he concluded.
"What we have to do is understand that we're at war and ask people to make choices ... which help us win this war we're in ... I think that the country would accept being asked to help in the energy area."
Kenderdine was doubtful, "Until we internalize the costs of those wars (against terror) into our oil prices, (consumption) is not going to dramatically change," she said.
One former senior energy official was blunter, "The appeal to patriotism doesn't work. It's been tried. After 9/11 some people set up a Web site -- saveabarrel.org. They launched a 'patriots' energy pledge,' to try and promote gas efficient vehicles. It had very little impact, people aren't interested."
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