Running Out of Energy

In 1973, with the country importing 6 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products daily, President Nixon pledged that by virtue of his Project Independence "in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need to provide our jobs, to heat our homes, and to keep our transportation moving." He advanced a catalog of energy proposals that covered everything from drilling on the outer continental shelf to building more nuclear power plants, from expanding the use of coal to conducting research on potential new sources. In the end it didn't work, and the U.S. failed to come close to his goal of energy independence. While the yearly numbers rose and fell, by 1980 net oil imports had increased 400,000 barrels a day over 1973.

After the second oil shock hit America in 1979, Washington's wandering attention was focused again on energy. Following Nixon's lead, President Carter pushed development of synthetic fuels as part of his strategy to slash imports. When he signed the Energy Security Act into law in June 1980, Carter said it would "encourage production of 2 million barrels a day of synthetic fuels by 1992." That didn't work either: synthetic-fuel production ended up slightly in excess of zero, and oil imports totaled 6.9 million barrels a day that year.

Throughout the years, lawmakers and Presidents insisted that if they handed out enough incentives, U.S. oil production would rise, and there would be less need for imports. In each instance, legislation was accompanied by extravagant forecasts. In 1974 policymakers predicted that U.S. oil production "could increase to more than 17 million barrels a day, which is more than sufficient to be at zero imports by 1985." The Reagan White House shared the optimism. A spokesman said that "the ranges that any reasonable person is considering include zero [imports] by 2000." By that year, however, imports were at their highest level ever, and domestic production had declined to levels not seen since 1950. Now President Bush has his own plan to jump-start oil production. He wants to begin drilling in a portion of the 1.5 million-acre arctic coastal-plain area of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (anwr). According to the White House, the President "believes that opening this small area to environmentally responsible exploration would provide the resources necessary to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil and provide for greater energy security."

CONSERVATION–BUT NOT FOR REAL MEN

After the 1973—74 energy crisis, when gas stations closed on Sundays and motorists waited in lines for hours to fill up, Congress enacted a series of tough conservation measures. The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 imposed stringent mileage requirements on automakers–an average of 27.5 m.p.g. on passenger cars by model year 1985–to curb gasoline consumption. It worked.

In the decade before the act's passage, gasoline consumption had risen 48%, to 6.5 million barrels a day in 1974. In years to follow, even with millions more cars on the highways, consumption remained largely unchanged. Beginning at 7 million barrels a day in 1976, demand went up and down in a narrow range and by 1991 was at just 7.2 million.

During the 1980s, as it became clear gasoline conservation was working, aided by a nasty recession, one energy forecast after another anticipated ever better mileage. The American Petroleum Institute, swept up by auto-industry fervor, announced in 1981 that "forecasts of fuel efficiency for new cars now exceed those mandates (27.5 m.p.g.), suggesting an industry-fleet average of 30 m.p.g. by 1985." Not exactly: this year the average is still 27.5 m.p.g. for vehicles officially labeled as passenger cars, but for the entire fleet of vehicles, including SUVs and trucks, it is much worse. The best overall fuel economy of 22.1 m.p.g. (for U.S.-made vehicles) was achieved in 1987—88. Aside from an occasional upward tick, that figure has inched steadily downward, to 20.4 m.p.g. last year.

That's because Congress lost interest in conservation and failed to keep the pressure on the car companies. Lawmakers refused to set new mileage goals. Worse, they excluded from the existing requirements light trucks and SUVs, the fastest-selling vehicles and the ones that use the most gasoline. Contributing even more to the trend, they extended an extraordinary tax benefit to the gas guzzlers, so drivers who used a vehicle for work could write off the cost on their tax returns–even as much as $38,200 toward a new Hummer H2 that gets only 10 m.p.g. As might be expected, consumption rose 1.5 million barrels a day over the past decade, to 8.8 million last year. But for owners of pricey vehicles like the Hummer, it keeps getting better. The tax-cutting bill signed into law in May expanded the write-off to $100,000.

For its part, the Bush Administration is dismissive of serious conservation. Vice President Cheney, who headed an Administration task force to devise an energy strategy–a group whose work was carried out in secret and whose papers remain secret–expressed the attitude two years ago in a now infamous way: "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

—from TIME, July 21, 2003

Questions

1. What is President Bush's solution to reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil?

2. In what year did the U.S. achieve its best overall fuel economy of 22.1 m.p.g.?