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The images of towering clouds of black smoke rising from petroleum facilities in and around Tehran after U.S. and Israeli forces bomb them horrify observers who understand the toxic implications and consequences for the environment and the millions of people who live in the region. The smoke poisons the very air they breathe, and the sulfur dioxide in it can form acid rain that would harm the very Iranians that President Donald Trump initially called upon to overthrow the regime.
That awful scene is a reminder: Whatever the motive for the attack, this war, like so many others, revolves around oil — as a target, as a weapon and as the fuel that runs the world’s war machines. And when oil is involved, the effects inevitably recoil on the U.S. in the form of higher prices, followed by yet more calls to drill public lands in the name of energy independence — or, in Trump-speak, “energy dominance.”
Within days of the American attack, the damage to petroleum facilities and the growing danger involved in traversing the Strait of Hormuz had sparked a 50% jump in global crude oil prices, which in turn caused American fuel prices to shoot up. Not only is that making it vastly more expensive to fill the average gas-guzzling tank, but it is also rippling through the global economy, leading to increased prices on just about everything else that depends on petroleum, from fertilizer to fruit and vegetables to plastic products. American pocketbooks are taking a hit in what is looking like a long-delayed echo of the 1970s energy crises — with one key difference: The U.S., by all measures, has already achieved energy independence, and yet that has done nothing to insulate Americans from geopolitics-exacerbated volatility in the price of energy.
The U.S. has already achieved energy independence, and yet that has done nothing to insulate Americans from geopolitics-exacerbated volatility in the price of energy.
To understand the current situation, it helps to look back to the early 1900s, when the nation began switching from coal to petroleum as the fuel of choice for engines, warships and, a little bit later, locomotives. At the same time, the U.S. was also shifting from getting its resources within its own borders — mostly from the West — to looking abroad, especially for oil. By the early 1970s, the U.S. relied on foreign producers for 36% of the oil that fueled our cars, our economy and our lifestyle.
In 1973, oil producers in the Middle East, angry about U.S. support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War, stopped sending tankers to the U.S., causing oil prices to shoot up significantly. Six years later, the Iranian Revolution sent crude prices soaring yet again. This not only made it expensive to fill up the gigantic highway gas-hogs of the day, it also dealt a crippling blow to the increasingly petroleum-fueled U.S. economy.
Hoping to escape the global quagmire, President Richard Nixon initiated what he called “Project Independence,” which had the lofty goal of weaning the U.S. from foreign energy by 1980. He noted that the country had made sacrifices throughout history to maintain its independence and added that now, “in the last third of this century, our independence will depend on maintaining and achieving self-sufficiency in energy.”
Nixon was not in office long enough to carry out his goal, but succeeding administrations took up the challenge in their own ways. Each had its own approach to achieving energy independence, whether it involved pushing for energy conservation, increased coal burning, or nuclear power, renewables or electric vehicles. Every president’s agenda, however, had one thing in common: They all sought more domestic oil and gas drilling, especially on public lands, with the goal of insulating the U.S. from global petroleum price shocks and volatility. It was a goal they pushed regardless of the toll it took on the climate, the land and waters, and the communities in and near the oil and gas fields.
The advent of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, which siphoned huge reservoirs of hydrocarbons from tight shale formations, eventually helped those drill-friendly policies pay off. During the Obama administration, the U.S. became the world’s largest crude oil producer, surpassing both Saudi Arabia and Russia, and the nation started exporting more petroleum products than it imported. Domestic oil and gas production has continued to climb steadily, and though the U.S. remains a net importer of crude oil, very few of the tankers required come from the Middle East. Domestic drillers now produce about 88% of the crude oil the nation consumes, bringing the U.S. tantalizingly close to achieving Nixon’s dream.
But even as the U.S. has extracted more hydrocarbons, it has also managed to consume more and more with every passing year, as the population burgeons, cars grow larger, plastic keeps piling up, and concepts like conservation and efficiency are dismissed in favor of “abundance” and yet more growth. The U.S. is now the largest petroleum guzzler on the planet, and therefore the most oil-dependent society as well. And that leaves us as exposed to price volatility and fluctuations in the global market as we have ever been.
Our petro-habit has helped lead us into the current imbroglio. Average nationwide gasoline prices have shot up by more than 30% since the conflict with Iran began, with Western states seeing the largest increases. The shock is already reverberating through the rest of the economy. Fertilizer and fuel prices are further eroding tariff- and drought-battered farmers’ thin margins, and mining companies are now forced to pay substantially more for the 200,000 gallons of diesel that a single haul truck uses annually.
For the last 50-some years, we have been told that freeing ourselves from the sticky web of the global oil market would require us to accept drill rigs sprouting like giant weeds in New Mexico, Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado and Utah, along with pumpjacks endlessly grinding away and sucking up billions of gallons of water and hydrocarbons, and the resulting air and water pollution and its impacts on human health and the environment. Meanwhile, the people in charge are still feeding us the same old line, even though it is clearly a lie: In mid-March, for example, Energy Secretary Chris Wright invoked emergency war powers to restart an offshore oil pipeline with a history of spills off Santa Barbara’s coast, defying a court injunction and California regulators’ objections, insisting it was necessary for “energy security.”
It makes you wonder what on Earth is actually the goal of this so-called “energy independence and dominance.”
It makes you wonder what on Earth is actually the goal of this so-called “energy independence and dominance.”
Trump may have unwittingly answered the question, when, in a social media post, he wrote: “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”
By “we,” of course, he means the petroleum corporations and their shareholders, which profit mightily off higher oil prices. He also means Russia, which is funding its own war machine with the additional $150 million per day it’s earned from oil sales since the Trump administration lifted sanctions in a mostly futile effort to subdue price increases. And he means the oil states’ budgets, which will benefit as well, especially in New Mexico, Wyoming and Alaska, although it’s unclear whether it will be enough to offset the war’s negative economic effects.
Meanwhile, everyone else is losing. The average American consumer, especially those in lower-income brackets, will see a larger share of their income devoured by the elevated cost of living and of filling their tanks to make the daily commute. The lands and communities of the West will suffer as calls for more drilling inevitably increase. But the biggest losers of all will be the nation and people of Iran, who are paying dearly for the rest of the planet’s oil gluttony.
If we truly want to be free of wars over oil and the damage they inflict on people, the environment and the economy, we need to not just liberate ourselves from relying on foreign oil, but also from our deadly and destructive addiction to oil.
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