Tithing at the crude altar.

• Author: Klare, Michael T.

President Barack Obama has often stated that one of his highest priorities is to vanquish the tyranny of oil" by developing alternative sources of energy and substantially reducing America's reliance on imported petroleum. But we will not be energy independent for the next thirty to forty years, even with a strong push to increase energy efficiency and spur the development of petroleum alternatives. During this time, America will remain dependent on oil derived from authoritarian regimes, weak states and nations in the midst of civil war.

Less and less crude will come from reliable suppliers in the Western Hemisphere. Given our continued dependence on imported oil, picking and choosing among our suppliers obviously would be ideal. But this is not an option. The oil market is thoroughly internationalized. Key traders draw on multiple sources of crude to satisfy the needs of refiners and retailers. Most importantly, a majority of the world's remaining oil is controlled by countries that are not democracies, do not honor the rule of law and are certainly not noted for their pristine human-rights behavior. If anything, our reliance on these producers is likely to grow as output in the older producing areas of the Western Hemisphere declines and more and more of the world's output is concentrated in Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.

In the past, the United States made an implicit bargain with our foreign energy suppliers; we will protect your government, supply arms to your military and overlook your human-rights violations in exchange for preferred access to your oil outputs. These arrangements reduce our political leverage, our moral authority and our ability to bargain with these states on other issues. We must accept the reality of our continued oil dependence and reframe our relationships so that the market, rather than guns, bloodshed and dictatorships, governs trade in crude. Contrary to popular belief, these petro-regimes need the United States more than the United States needs them. The tyranny of oil can be stopped.

Energy dependence is our reality. At the beginning of 2009, the United States needed nearly three-fifths of its total oil supply to come from imports. To reduce this high level of reliance, most policy makers favor some combination of measures aimed at spurring conservation and expanding the supply of domestically produced fuels. These could include higher gasoline taxes, incentives for the acquisition of gas-electric hybrids or all-electric vehicles, the accelerated production of alternative fuels (such as liquids derived from shale, biomass and coal), the expansion of public transit and increased drilling in protected areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the outer continental shelf. All of these proposals have their fair share of advocates and opponents. All, no doubt, will be examined closely by this and future administrations. But even if given a strong endorsement by Congress and the White House, every one of them poses significant obstacles of one sort or another, and so, no matter which menu of options is ultimately adopted, it will be several decades before they can achieve maximum effect.

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Unfortunately, no amount of wishful thinking can get us around the facts. Much hope has been placed, for example, on the development of advanced biofuels that can be derived from nonedible plant matter like switchgrass and straw and that can be manufactured by chemical means, rather than energy-inefficient cooking. But no such refineries are now in operation and it will be a decade or more before fuel of this type is available in large quantities. The full-scale development of other petroleum alternatives, such as coal-to-liquids (CTL) and biodiesel derived from certain strains of algae, is expected to take even longer. Boosting wind, solar and nuclear energy to produce more electricity for use by plugin hybrids, all-electric cars and high-speed rail will also require trillions of dollars in new investment and take several decades to achieve. Thus, even in 2030, the Department of Energy projects that biofuels and CTL will provide a mere 14 percent of the nation's liquid-fuel supply, with petroleum providing the remaining 86 percent. And, because of the long-term decline in domestic oil output, imports will have to provide about half of all that petroleum.

This is a crisis long in the making. U.S. domestic oil output reached its peak and began a long-term decline almost forty years ago. Back in 1972, America produced approximately 12.5 million barrels of oil per day and imported only 4.5 million barrels, so foreign crude constituted about one-fourth of the total supply. Since then, our oil consumption has continued to grow while domestic output has fallen, so the difference has had to be satisfied with ever-increasing quantities of imported petroleum. We crossed the 50 percent threshold of reliance on foreign oil in 1998 and have been heading toward 60 percent dependence ever since. Plans announced by President Obama to stimulate the development of petroleum alternatives will reverse this trend and possibly bring U.S. dependence back below the 50 percent threshold in a decade or so; but with domestic consumption continuing to rise, there will be no reduction in the actual volume of oil we must obtain from foreign suppliers.

Where, then, will this oil come from? It will not come from allies; crude will come from barely tolerable and increasingly unreliable tyrannies.

Until now, we have been very fortunate, securing a large share of our imported petroleum from more-or-less friendly suppliers in the Western Hemisphere--but these happy days are drawing to a close. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the United States obtained approximately 45 percent of its imported oil from Western Hemisphere sources, mainly Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. The more we look into the future, however, the less we can expect to rely on these countries to meet our import requirements. Canada's conventional oil output is expected to fall by half between now and 2030, from 2.1 to 1.1 million barrels per day, and while the production of unconventional fuels derived from tar sands (bitumen) could more than compensate for that decline, the high cost of producing these fuels and the various environmental hazards involved could cap production at but a few million barrels per day, limiting the potential...