By Sherman Stein on July 9, 2008.

The world is now fighting for oil.  The fight is for the most part peaceful, as China, the United States and other large consumers scramble to sign contracts in Africa and the Middle East for access to known pools of oil, for the right to explore and drill in the search for new fields, and to protect pipelines.  Witness the contracts coming out of Iraq: The companies involved are all from the West, even though Russia and other countries had wanted a piece of the action. Witness the establishment by the Department of Defense of an African Command and bases near oil or the pipelines that carry it.

 

But the fight has already spilled blood. I refer to the occupation of Iraq, for which over 4000 Americans and at least 100,000 Iraqis have died. While the alleged reasons for that occupation have shifted from meeting the threat of weapons of mass destruction, to destroying a source of terrorism, to “spreading democracy and freedom” in the Middle East, the steady unspoken motive was to get our hands on a gigantic pool of oil. Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary, admitted this openly. If Iraq’s major export were pecans, we would have relied on diplomatic means, such as renewed inspections, to meet the threat.  No president is in the position to whisper in a mother’s ear, “I’m really sending your sons and daughters into harm’s way for oil.”

 

What looks to most of us as an acute crisis has been brewing for years. For instance, United States production peaked in 1970. Once an oil exporter, we now import over 70% of our oil, crude and refined. Geologists have scoured the planet for decades and doubt that they will find any more super oil fields like the Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.  Oil wells have to be drilled deeper to reach the remaining fields.  Wells sunk in the ocean are more costly to drill and to maintain. Even fields in the North Sea and Alaska have passed their peak production.  The warning signs all point in the same direction.

 

The arithmetic of the impending disaster is simple. As of this moment the world uses about 85 million barrels of oil a day. (Barrels, which hold 42 gallons, are still used as the measure even though they stopped being employed for the transport of oil over a century ago.) We have allowed the lure of the internal combustion engine to lead us down a path whose end is in sight. Estimates of the amount of remaining oil are as high as 4 trillion barrels, which sounds like an endless supply.  Yet, at the present rate of consumption, it would all be gone in less than 130 years. But with the rate at which the world economy is expanding, the last drop could disappear during the lifetimes of people alive today. It is the traditional tragedy of the commons for a society to use up a disappearing resource at an ever faster pace, not at a slower rate.

 

The energy crisis will continue to tighten its noose on the world economy. We cannot assume that science will remove the rope from around our necks.  Consider, for example, the highly touted biomass substitute. It would take more than 50 million square miles of corn to replace oil even at the present rate of its consumption. That’s greater than all the land on the planet. Only a Congressman from a corn state would push this as a realistic solution. You can check the arithmetic yourself: one acre produces 328 gallons per year of ethanol, 1.4 gallons of ethanol has the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline, a  barrel of oil yields 27 gallons of gasoline and diesel, there are 640 acres in a square mile, and 365 days in a year. That’s not counting the 140 gallons of fossil fuel used to farm that acre. Nor does it take into consideration the impact on the price of food.

 

In order that the battle for oil does not get bloodier than it already is, the oil importing nations must face their collective challenge in a peaceful way. To divvy up the remaining spoils they must form what could be called the Organization of Oil Importing Countries, the natural analog of OPEC, whose membership comprises most of the oil exporting countries.

 

Inevitably, there will be vast changes in the way people in the already developed countries live, for our life style is founded on a plentiful, inexpensive source of oil.  The demise of the supersonic Concorde, which was doomed partly by the high cost of jet fuel, should stand as a symbol of what we must face squarely, person by person, as a nation, and as an expanding species.  The Oil Age will end, just as the Stone Age ended.

 

We will meet the challenge one way or another, either peacefully or by violence.  Given the means of violence now available, it is preferable to work together to resolve the common problem.  OPIC is the logical medium of that cooperation.

End