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TechnoratiThe Pentagon v. Peak Oil
How Wars of the Future May Be Fought Just to Run the Machines That Fight Them
Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis -- either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone.
Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That's greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million -- and yet it's a gross underestimate of the Pentagon's wartime consumption.
Such numbers cannot do full justice to the extraordinary gas-guzzling expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, for every soldier stationed "in theater," there are two more in transit, in training, or otherwise in line for eventual deployment to the war zone -- soldiers who also consume enormous amounts of oil, even if less than their compatriots overseas. Moreover, to sustain an "expeditionary" army located halfway around the world, the Department of Defense must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel, and equipment every year by plane or ship, consuming additional tanker-loads of petroleum. Add this to the tally and the Pentagon's war-related oil budget jumps appreciably, though exactly how much we have no real way of knowing.
And foreign wars, sad to say, account for but a small fraction of the Pentagon's total petroleum consumption. Possessing the world's largest fleet of modern aircraft, helicopters, ships, tanks, armored vehicles, and support systems -- virtually all powered by oil -- the Department of Defense (DoD) is, in fact, the world's leading consumer of petroleum. It can be difficult to obtain precise details on the DoD's daily oil hit, but an April 2007 report by a defense contractor, LMI Government Consulting, suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (14 million gallons) every day. This is greater than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.
Not "Guns v. Butter," but "Guns v. Oil"
For anyone who drives a motor vehicle these days, this has ominous implications. With the price of gasoline now 75 cents to a dollar more than it was just six months ago, it's obvious that the Pentagon is facing a potentially serious budgetary crunch. Just like any ordinary American family, the DoD has to make some hard choices: It can use its normal amount of petroleum and pay more at the Pentagon's equivalent of the pump, while cutting back on other basic expenses; or it can cut back on its gas use in order to protect favored weapons systems under development. Of course, the DoD has a third option: It can go before Congress and plead for yet another supplemental budget hike, but this is sure to provoke renewed calls for a timetable for an American troop withdrawal from Iraq, and so is an unlikely prospect at this time.
Nor is this destined to prove a temporary issue. As recently as two years ago, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) was confidently predicting that the price of crude oil would hover in the $30 per barrel range for another quarter century or so, leading to gasoline prices of about $2 per gallon. But then came Hurricane Katrina, the crisis in Iran, the insurgency in southern Nigeria, and a host of other problems that tightened the oil market, prompting the DoE to raise its long-range price projection into the $50 per barrel range. This is the amount that figures in many current governmental budgetary forecasts -- including, presumably, those of the Department of Defense. But just how realistic is this? The price of a barrel of crude oil today is hovering in the $66 range. Many energy analysts now say that a price range of $70-$80 per barrel (or possibly even significantly more) is far more likely to be our fate for the foreseeable future.
A price rise of this magnitude, when translated into the cost of gasoline, aviation fuel, diesel fuel, home-heating oil, and petrochemicals will play havoc with the budgets of families, farms, businesses, and local governments. Sooner or later, it will force people to make profound changes in their daily lives -- as benign as purchasing a hybrid vehicle in place of an SUV or as painful as cutting back on home heating or health care simply to make an unavoidable drive to work. It will have an equally severe affect on the Pentagon budget. As the world's number one consumer of petroleum products, the DoD will obviously be disproportionately affected by a doubling in the price of crude oil. If it can't turn to Congress for redress, it will have to reduce its profligate consumption of oil and/or cut back on other expenses, including weapons purchases.
The rising price of oil is producing what Pentagon contractor LMI calls a "fiscal disconnect" between the military's long-range objectives and the realities of the energy marketplace. "The need to recapitalize obsolete and damaged equipment [from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan] and to develop high-technology systems to implement future operational concepts is growing," it explained in an April 2007 report. However, an inability "to control increased energy costs from fuel and supporting infrastructure diverts resources that would otherwise be available to procure new capabilities."
And this is likely to be the least of the Pentagon's worries. The Department of Defense is, after all, the world's richest military organization, and so can be expected to tap into hidden accounts of one sort or another in order to pay its oil bills and finance its many pet weapons projects. However, this assumes that sufficient petroleum will be available on world markets to meet the Pentagon's ever-growing needs -- by no means a foregone conclusion. Like every other large consumer, the DoD must now confront the looming -- but hard to assess -- reality of "Peak Oil"; the very real possibility that global oil production is at or near its maximum sustainable ("peak") output and will soon commence an irreversible decline.
That global oil output will eventually reach a peak and then decline is no longer a matter of debate; all major energy organizations have now embraced this view. What remains open for argument is precisely when this moment will arrive. Some experts place it comfortably in the future -- meaning two or three decades down the pike -- while others put it in this very decade. If there is a consensus emerging, it is that peak-oil output will occur somewhere around 2015. Whatever the timing of this momentous event, it is apparent that the world faces a profound shift in the global availability of energy, as we move from a situation of relative abundance to one of relative scarcity. It should be noted, moreover, that this shift will apply, above all, to the form of energy most in demand by the Pentagon: the petroleum liquids used to power planes, ships, and armored vehicles.
The Bush Doctrine Faces Peak Oil
Peak oil is not one of the global threats the Department of Defense has ever had to face before; and, like other U.S. government agencies, it tended to avoid the issue, viewing it until recently as a peripheral matter. As intimations of peak oil's imminent arrival increased, however, it has been forced to sit up and take notice. Spurred perhaps by rising fuel prices, or by the growing attention being devoted to "energy security" by academic strategists, the DoD has suddenly taken an interest in the problem. To guide its exploration of the issue, the Office of Force Transformation within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy commissioned LMI to conduct a study on the implications of future energy scarcity for Pentagon strategic planning.
The resulting study, "Transforming the Way the DoD Looks at Energy," was a bombshell. Determining that the Pentagon's favored strategy of global military engagement is incompatible with a world of declining oil output, LMI concluded that "current planning presents a situation in which the aggregate operational capability of the force may be unsustainable in the long term."
LMI arrived at this conclusion from a careful analysis of current U.S. military doctrine. At the heart of the national military strategy imposed by the Bush administration -- the Bush Doctrine -- are two core principles: transformation, or the conversion of America's stodgy, tank-heavy Cold War military apparatus into an agile, continent-hopping high-tech, futuristic war machine; and pre-emption, or the initiation of hostilities against "rogue states" like Iraq and Iran, thought to be pursuing weapons of mass destruction. What both principles entail is a substantial increase in the Pentagon's consumption of petroleum products -- either because such plans rely, to an increased extent, on air and sea-power or because they imply an accelerated tempo of military operations.
As summarized by LMI, implementation of the Bush Doctrine requires that "our forces must expand geographically and be more mobile and expeditionary so that they can be engaged in more theaters and prepared for expedient deployment anywhere in the world"; at the same time, they "must transition from a reactive to a proactive force posture to deter enemy forces from organizing for and conducting potentially catastrophic attacks." It follows that, "to carry out these activities, the U.S. military will have to be even more energy intense.... Considering the trend in operational fuel consumption and future capability needs, this 'new' force employment construct will likely demand more energy/fuel in the deployed setting."
The resulting increase in petroleum consumption is likely to prove dramatic. During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the average American soldier consumed only four gallons of oil per day; as a result of George W. Bush's initiatives, a U.S. soldier in Iraq is now using four times as much. If this rate of increase continues unabated, the next major war could entail an expenditure of 64 gallons per soldier per day.
It was the unassailable logic of this situation that led LMI to conclude that there is a severe "operational disconnect" between the Bush administration's principles for future war-fighting and the global energy situation. The administration has, the company notes, "tethered operational capability to high-technology solutions that require continued growth in energy sources" -- and done so at the worst possible moment historically. After all, the likelihood is that the global energy supply is about to begin diminishing rather than expanding. Clearly, writes LMI in its April 2007 report, "it may not be possible to execute operational concepts and capabilities to achieve our security strategy if the energy implications are not considered." And when those energy implications are considered, the strategy appears "unsustainable."
The Pentagon as a Global Oil-Protection Service
How will the military respond to this unexpected challenge? One approach, favored by some within the DoD, is to go "green" -- that is, to emphasize the accelerated development and acquisition of fuel-efficient weapons systems so that the Pentagon can retain its commitment to the Bush Doctrine, but consume less oil while doing so. This approach, if feasible, would have the obvious attraction of allowing the Pentagon to assume an environmentally-friendly facade while maintaining and developing its existing, interventionist force structure.
But there is also a more sinister approach that may be far more highly favored by senior officials: To ensure itself a "reliable" source of oil in perpetuity, the Pentagon will increase its efforts to maintain control over foreign sources of supply, notably oil fields and refineries in the Persian Gulf region, especially in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This would help explain the recent talk of U.S. plans to retain "enduring" bases in Iraq, along with its already impressive and elaborate basing infrastructure in these other countries.
The U.S. military first began procuring petroleum products from Persian Gulf suppliers to sustain combat operations in the Middle East and Asia during World War II, and has been doing so ever since. It was, in part, to protect this vital source of petroleum for military purposes that, in 1945, President Roosevelt first proposed the deployment of an American military presence in the Persian Gulf region. Later, the protection of Persian Gulf oil became more important for the economic well-being of the United States, as articulated in President Jimmy Carter's "Carter Doctrine" speech of January 23, 1980 as well as in President George H. W. Bush's August 1990 decision to stop Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, which led to the first Gulf War -- and, many would argue, the decision of the younger Bush to invade Iraq over a decade later.
Along the way, the American military has been transformed into a "global oil-protection service" for the benefit of U.S. corporations and consumers, fighting overseas battles and establishing its bases to ensure that we get our daily fuel fix. It would be both sad and ironic, if the military now began fighting wars mainly so that it could be guaranteed the fuel to run its own planes, ships, and tanks -- consuming hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could instead be spent on the development of petroleum alternatives.
Michael T. Klare, professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, is the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books).
Copyright 2007 Michael T. Klare
18 Comments so far
Show AllA bit of internet search today about military oil consumption revealed this startling fact:
The US military, in each three weeks in Iraq, consumes more oil than ALL the allied forces did during the ENTIRE YEARS OF WWI.
Also, 70% of all the fuel consumed in Iraq is used as fuel for military jet aircraft.
Judging by known oil reserves (usually inflated to keep stock prices up & give oil producing nations international leverage), and based on average daily world oil consumption, there are approximately 10,000 days of oil left before all the world's oil is consumed. That's about 27 years, folks, but you had better believe things will get real sticky socially before then.
At the moment we are spending one tenth to one thirtieth the amount on renewable energy sources (wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, hydro-electric) that is being spent by the oil companies to explore for new oil. The oil companies have been subsidized by the taxpayer to pay for new exploration, yet the consumer is constantly being gouged with ever increasing gas prices, while the oil companies are recording record profits. What's wrong with this picture?
Cruxpuppy: I applaud your informed arguments, and am glad you made my case that MARS (war, military) is NOT the only power. There is a reason why within the GRAND pantheon, the circle of Creation, that Venus, who in her first incarnation is known as MOTHER EARTH (Demeter) is his Divine counterbalance. When the bad boys keep behaving badly, NATURE does send signals. Left brain academe may refer to the study of cosmic sign language as some kind of effete superstition, but TRUTH never goes out of style, and this belief system has endured in spite of its advocates being murdered by the 'holy' church. WHEN no less than 7, a symbolic number to be sure, hurricanes hit Florida- the state that gave the world the Bush junta (2004-2005) breaking all statistical averages, rendering portions of the state AS IF bombed, no one connected the cosmic dots. Then MOTHER nature sent Katrina, as if aiming, right at our GULF of Mexico to simulate the destruction our nation brought to Iraq in the GULF war, a/k/a war against "terrorism." These types of events will continue and likely escalate, as there is a wisdom to elemental forces, a wisdom shamen, poets and mystics have understood (intuitively) in every age and time. As Carlos Casteneda's teacher Don Juan once offered, "What gives you the AUTHORITY to say thus and so..." The Western model and its worldview is based on MANY false suppositions, and provides its own cover to truths that have by their absence, held minds hostage to history as little more than the redundant waste of war. When mankind looks again to the heavens for a template that points the way to peace among tribes, rather than their competitive hierarchical claims and the violence that supports these, we may find ourselves (those that do survive) encountering a very different Earth. To the degree MARS rules (i.e. religions of force and the wars financed by states that adhere to these) VENUS remains at deficit, and SHE wil work to re-instate the balance, for all life depends upon it. THAT is the code writ into DNA... BOTH sides of "the great force" are required to make and sustain life. Our Divine equation has been usurped by Mars, as is reflected in our world of dead zones, marching armies, an embarassment of riches devoted to weapons and products intending to do harm. This is NOT a balanced equation. Cosmic math shows a "correction" in the works.
Generally speaking investors are not sentimentalist. They buy or sell on the best facts available or access to someone who they trust to have reliable information. I have watched the oil-sands stock for a year or so looking for a place to short them because they had been on a run-up in price and the information about the cost of extraction was surfacing. There have been some short term plays but if one looks at a stock like STO, which is an oil-sands Canadian stock, over a five year period you see it go from about $8.50 a share to $29.00 a share.
CCJ, a uranium oriented Canadian company has done better in that 5 year period going from about $5.00 a share to its current $55.60 a share.
While it is true that these prices have had help from a deteriorating U.S. Dollar it doesnt account for these dramatic performances. A lot of people think that there is a profitable future in these energy sources.
whattheheck is right that as we pass peak oil, extraction and refining costs increase. The cost could easily double and double again in the next fifty years so that in 2050, five gallons of gasoline will be expended in the production of one gallon.
Add in the astronomical environmental costs of such intensive extraction and the compounding climate change, fossil security costs through the Pentagon's $500/hour mercenaries, and the opportunity costs, as Mr. Klare suggested, for the failure to invest instead in renewable energy.
The sad part is that renewable energy won't cost anywhere near the low quality fossil fuels developent after the peak. If we look deeper into the economics, I think we'll find that, given well-informed and engaged citizens exerting proper demand, the energy market can bear a ten-fold to fifty-fold increased value through renewables over low quality fossil. This means that over 90% of the inputs to fossil production may be diverted to other pressing needs such as energy independence, free education, free healthcare, free transportation, elimination of excess hunger and disease, stabilization and protection of the biosphere.
So the future looks very bright when we focus on building the civic strength of the citizenry, and ignore and boycott the establisment.
The underlying assumption of Michael Klare's argument is that the Pentagon is captive to the price at the pump like any consumer of oil, whether public utility or haggard commuter.
Rest assured the Pentagon enjoys a hefty discount and that the high price we consumers pay underwrites that lower cost.
The Pentagon is not intimidated by Exxon Mobil, nor is there wailing or gnashing of teeth over the prospect of Peak Oil. In the short term, this 800 pound gorilla interposes itself between the source of supply and the suppliers, the OPEC Cartel and the Global retailing cartel. The Pentagon smiles and the oil industry smiles back, nervously.
The Pentagon is both master and servant of the oil retailing cartel. OPEC is a straw man, a victim, not a victimizer. As Wal-Mart commands its suppliers, so does the global retailing cartel command OPEC.
Between the Pentagon and the retailers is a "synergy". You give me the oil I need at a price I like and me n' the boys will keep these rag heads off your back.
There is oil to sell and money to be made in the near term, more money than has ever been made before, in history. The prospect of a diminishing supply or "peak" is a glorious wet dream and guarantee of continued astronomical profits.
Military vehicles will not always run on diesel.
We know precious little about the real potentials that exist within the dark domain of the military/industrial synergism. Technology exists of which we know almost nothing. This is because very little light emerges from the black hole created by black budgets.
At the moment the Pentagon chooses, amazing electric power plants for military vehicles will be announced. Breakthroughs in battery storage, solar collection, fuel cell technology, and so on will suddenly occur.
The age of oil could end tommorrow, but it is too soon to shut down this obscenely profitable internal combustion engine.
The greatest efficiency in military operations is currently being developed through NASA and the Space Command. Weapons in space will dramatically reduce dependency on a navy and air force. Big, big savings! The demand for boots on the ground will remain high. Weapons in space is the final piece of the "full spectrum dominance" puzzle.
The Pentagon can manage the "peak oil" thing well enough.
What it cannot manage, and this is the crux of the matter, is "climate change" or "global ecological chaos", whatever one likes to call it.
This chaos is imminent. It will scuttle the Pentagon's future plans, and ours, too, of course. This is the true "long emergency" that Kuntsler should be talking about.
Re the harder to get at "oil" --
it's kinda like breaking down whole hills in order to get one ring's worth of gold -- but who cares when the American taxpayer is picking up the mining expense?
You can bet it will take time and at least slow down war -- but then again, they do have nuclear weapons and as far as I can see, very little restraint. Have we been able to stop any one of these insane ideas so far?
QUOTE:by sbrownn--
The pentagon is very aware of peak oil and has been for sometime. Why do you think we are in Iraq? Out oil, perhaps the sooner the better; back to swords and shields.UNQUOTE
Reminds me of the Robert Redford movie -- "30 Days of the Condor"? or was it 3 days? Actually, I think the book was "60 days of the Condor"!!! But it's exactly this subject . . . CIA kills people who figure out that they're planning to invade Iraq for OIL!!!
Used to play on TV every once in awhile -- Great movie!!
It's probably my penchant for seeing allegorical symbolism but IF we were living 2000 years in the future and seeing this conundrum from a distance, wouldn't it look like some kind of myth or cautionary tale? A nation builds up the largest military monstrous machine in the world, but it can only move if fed oil. BUT the oil is in hostile turf, which calls for shipping all its military units & installations there to fight for that "food/fuel" supply. The military exhausts itself (blood & treasure) in this struggle, and becomes like the SPHINX a relic of the desert sands. An ode to greed and shortsightedness, a castigation to leaders who only think about today's profits and miss the whole point of their role and intended service to human destiny (and the greater good, not to mention the ultimate evolution of mankind)
Vico,
Evidently you havent figured out that there is an energy in to energy out ratio to not only heavy crude but also to tar sands and shale. Not even taking into consideration the devestating ecological damage. You also sound like an advocate of renewable oil, probably in the form of abiotic sources? I think you need to do a bit more research than one books worth of perceptions.
All the evidence indicates that oil is not renewable, at least in humans lifetime. So it doesn't make much sense in our economic system to spend 1000 kilo watts of power to extract 990 kilo watts of power. And, you have not mentioned what happens to this saving grace of heavy oil and tar sands when oil becomes over $100/barrel. Looks like a mute point to me. At present consumption, that's 85 billion dollars per day. Now just where is all that money supposed to come from? Fire up the Fed Reserve and print some more? Get real!
vico is half right, but the other half is this:
there is no question that we are soon to reach the peak of "easy" oil, i.e. petroleum that doesn't take a lot of energy input to wrestle out of the ground and into usable form. When oil prices reach $100/barrel, it becomes theoretically profitable to tap "difficult" oil, like the Alberta tar sands, or deep/far offshore reserves. These sources, however, require orders of magnitude more energy inputs to recover, and usually have equally large effects on the environment. The tar sands (we're talking asphalt here) need huge inputs of natural gas and water and leave massive environmental damage. They can never be "profitable" except in the narrowest short-term sense -- somebody's going to pay for the "externalities" one way or another. Therefore, they will not, despite Greg Palast, be anything but a side show. Same is true for offshore, Venezuela, etc.
Kunstler can't be wrong unless we have a fairy godmother; I keep clicking my heels, but nothing happens.
I used to believe in the idea that Mr. Klare is flogging in this article, however, i don't anymore.
i think Mr. Klare should read Greg Palast's book, "Armed Madhouse."
The reason i mention this book is that it puts forth much more plausible reasons why the US is in Iraq - To control the price of Oil, not to actually expropriate the oil from Iraq.
It also debunks the notion that we are quickly running out of oil. as the price of oil climbs, new, vast reserves of oil (like the Alberta Oil Sands and the Massive quantity of heavy oil in Venezuela) are actually being counted as actual, profitable, recoverable reserves of petroleum.
At $12 a barrel there is not much oil out there, but at $70/barrel there is a shitload of oil and just like DeBeers controls the price of diamonds, so does OPEC with oil. Controlling Iraq is one way the USA can have a say at the OPEC table.
The peak oil misconception is very dangerous because the Oil companies want the public to believe there is not much oil out there to justify ridiculous oil prices. So Mr. Klare is playing right into their hands, unfortunately.
"Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis — either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone."
Now get Al Gore to convert this into tons of carbon -- and add it to the tons of carbon produced every time the resistance torches an oil installation.
abbybwood said:
"As to Kucinich…I was at an event for him in Los Angeles when he was running for President last round. He was swooning over Netanyahu and Israel. Can someone PLEASE find me a candidate who will not kiss AIPAC's ring?"
Mike Gravel
so rumsfeld wants to "transform" the military, and thereby exponentially increases the amount of gas/oil the military needs. and this at a time when peak oil is becoming more & more of an issue. so this creates a conflict b/n the projection of military power and the oil industry's ability to fuel that military, though in the short-term, big oil makes tons and tons of money.
are these guys just incredibly stupid, or does the short-term interest of the oil industry drive EVERYTHING they do? is there a strategy to this nonsense, or are they just dumber than rocks?
Mr. Klare, I hadn't thought about this angle. Thanks for teaching me something new today. I only wish it wasn't such a glum truth.
Advise everyone to read James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" about the end of oil and how we will be living. Hint, hint....we shouldn't be slaughtering all those horses to satiate Europe's lust for their meat. The back cover of Kunstler's book is a horse pulling a car.
As to Kucinich...I was at an event for him in Los Angeles when he was running for President last round. He was swooning over Netanyahu and Israel. Can someone PLEASE find me a candidate who will not kiss AIPAC's ring?
We need to do some major house cleaning in regards to Israel. Read Scott Ritter's Commondreams column. He feels because of their incredible influence on U.S. legislation and foreign policy that AIPAC should have to register as a foreign agent!
He went so far as to say, "Why don't we just raise the Israeli flag and get it over with", or something to that effect.
Remember what Sharon said on the floor of the Knesset about 4 years ago: "I don't care what the United States says! We OWN the United States! They do as they are told!" Heck! Even on good ol' Fox there was a series on how Israel has major spying going on here in the form of big telephone records receiving corporations etc.
Just watch ALL the candidates grovel and fall to the ground swooning when asked if they support Israel over "Palestine"! Wake up America!!!!
The pentagon is very aware of peak oil and has been for sometime. Why do you think we are in Iraq? Out oil, perhaps the sooner the better; back to swords and shields.
Mr. Klare: I came to this same realization months ago as we all ponder the coming demise of the petroleum era. When the rest of us are doing without, the military will be roaming the streets happily burning what is left of this resource. You can bet that the last vehicle to combust gasoline will be a military one.
This country is so far gone it boggles the mind. We have our secret agencies spying on us fomenting unrest and assasinations, a press that is now almost totally controlled. Military bases in 130 countries. We need a thorough house cleaning. Kucinich is honest and intelligent, he could do it if we could through some miracle get him elected and then kept from being assasinated by our own government agencies.