Let’s consider the complete costs of waging war for imported oil
In a recent speech about energy, President Obama said: “If we refuse to take into account the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction – if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and the national security costs and the true economic costs – we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future.”
Now, two professors at the University of Nebraska have come forward with some of the facts that the president wants “to take into account” – “the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction.”
In a groundbreaking article in Environment magazine, “Securing Foreign Oil: A Case for Including Military Operations in the Climate Change Impact of Fuels,” Professors Adam J. Liska and Richard K. Perrin try to put a price-tag on U.S. oil imports.
Yes, it’s well-known that the U.S. imports nearly 60 percent of the nation’s total oil consumption – at least 12.9 million barrels per day – at a direct cost of roughly $300 billion a year. But that’s just a small part of the total cost of our dependency on imported oil.
After all, half of oil imports – and a third of our oil consumption – come from the OPEC oil cartel, mostly from the Middle East. Most of this Middle Eastern oil arrives in the U.S. on four supertankers every day. As these supertankers travel through the dangerous maritime straits of the Middle East, the U.S. military protects them — at a cost of $100 billion a year, according to estimates by professors Liska and Perrin.
Then, there’s the cost of the Iraq War. As former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote in his 2007 memoir, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.” Since 2003, this war has cost almost $100 billion a year.
What about the war in Afghanistan, which has cost more than $300 billion since 2001? As professors Liska and Perrin write, unless new reserves are developed, global oil production is approaching its “peak.” And the war just might have something to do with the proposed oil and gas pipeline from Kazakhstan – one of the four countries with the largest projected increase in oil production by 2030 through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean.
In addition to costing hundreds of billions of dollars — and, even more importantly, tens of thousands of human lives — these military operations have a heavy carbon footprint. Professors Liska and Perrin estimate that the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from protecting supertankers in the Persian Gulf total 34.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, while the war in Iraq emits another 43.3 million metric tons.
When federal policymakers consider replacing gasoline with biofuels such as ethanol, federal law requires that “indirect emissions” of greenhouse gases from fuel production must be considered.
Let’s also consider the economic and environmental costs of using the U.S. military to protect imported oil. Professors Liska and Perrin have painstakingly computed these costs. Now it’s time to consider them as the consequences of America’s addiction to imported oil.
As President Obama says, ““If we refuse to take into account the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction … we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future.”
Chuck Woodside is the chief executive officer of KAAPA Ethanol L.L.C. in Minden, and vice chairman of the Renewable Fuels Association, the national trade association for the U.S. ethanol industry.
