Without Energy, We Will Be Extinct.

As the most powerful nation in the history of the world, the U.S. faces today its most critical challenge. It’s not from a foreign foe, from Iranian threats of $200/barrel oil, from war between Israel and Hezbollah, but from our own appetite for energy, primarily oil.

We are on tender hooks. An interruption of the Alaskan oil field supply leading to a loss of daily production of nearly 400,000 barrels is what has confronted us just this morning. That loss will take days, weeks, perhaps months to fix according to BP, the oil field owner/operator. The production loss may trigger the draw down of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the first time since the Clinton Administration.

That loss alone could send gasoline prices up another $1.00/ gallon over the next several weeks according to my commodity broker friends. But WAIT THAT’S AN EASY PROJECTION. It doesn’t stop there. T. Boone Pickens, the hedge fund oilman and billionaire geologist, said last week that annual worldwide consumption is 86 million barrels/day and production is 80 million barrels/day. You do the math: $4.00/gallon gasoline is an almost surety even before this Alaskan production shortfall.

And it’s not going away this time. No energy cycle from expensive to cheap. I spent the first 10 years of my career in the mining business, riding the energy-induced mining equipment boom (and bust) following the Arab Oil Embargo. By the mid ‘80s cheap oil was again in front of us and it fueled anew our dependence on unstable sources of supply.

Are we in la la land or what? This country lives on oil. We consume most of the world’s energy, our transportation network feeds our lifestyle “oil- habitation” and sprawl… we’ve all seen this coming.

USA Energy Independence needs an emergency, a national call to action. I’ve heard just in the last few weeks (sound bites all) John Kerry, George Bush, Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman and Hillary call for USA Energy Independence. Some of them actually have a plan. But the plans involve Ethanol or Oil Sands Or Coal or BioDiesel or Hydrogen, singularly or in some loose concert. It needs cohesiveness and greater immediacy, a central non-partisan focus, with statesmen not politicians, to pull us together.

We already have a national energy emergency, so we need a 911 energy-independence mentality, a Cabinet level position on Energy National Security, a daily review in the Oval Office of Energy Self Reliance initiatives, a Press Corps asking for daily Energy briefings, and more, for us to finally turn the corner on this Oil-Induced Hard Reality and Pain-at-the-Pump.

Join with us. Send a message to our leadership. Give us your email address and your zipcode (we’ll never share it) at http://www.usaenergyindependence.com. Maybe together we can bring the President from Crawford to the White House now to address this issue. He can even bring Cindy Sheehan and her Press entourage.


Bill Wolski is co-founder USA-EI.