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Today's Top News
Gas-Guzzling US Military Confronted with Reality of 'Peak Oil'
Surging price of oil forces US military to seek alternative energy sources
It's a secret just how much oil the US military uses, but estimates range from around 400,000 barrels a day in peacetime - almost as much as Greece - to 800,000 barrels a day at the height of the Iraq war.This puts a single nation's armed forces near Australia as an oil consumer and among the top 25 countries in the world today.
US Marines south of Baghdad in April 2003. The US military used an estimated 800,000 barrels a day during the conflict. (Photograph: Wally Santana/AP) Either way it is by far the world's largest single buyer of oil
and the last thing any admiral, general or under secretary of defence
has had to be been concerned about is whether there's gas in the tanks
or that the navy's carbon emissions are a bit extravagant.
But there are signs of change. Every $10 rise in the price of oil costs the gas-guzzling US air force around an extra $600m each year. Just keeping one US soldier in Afghanistan with the world price of oil at $80 a barrel now costs hundreds of dollars a day in fuel alone. And because the US as a country imports more than $300bn worth of oil a year, fiscal reality is dawning. The US military spent around $8bn in 2004 on fuel, and probably twice that last year. Surging world fuel prices are likely to put the brakes on the US oil war machine as much as political opposition.
The military knows this. Earlier this year a Joint Operating Environment report from the US joint forces command predicted that global surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be a shortfall of nearly 10m barrels a day by 2015.
"Peak oil", said the generals, would impact massively on the US and other economies, and the US military would be compromised. Meanwhile Wesley Clark, former supreme allied commander in Europe, has argued strongly that America's addiction to foreign oil is unsustainable and, by extension, the military's $20bn a year spend on oil and other energy must be reconsidered.
The military answer has been to obey former President Bush and look to home. The navy's decision to convert one ship to algae-based biofuel echoes a US Air Force plan to create a massive synthetic-fuel industry to provide the military with guaranteed, secure homegrown supplies. One idea is to turn America's abundant supplies of coal and biofuel crops into liquid fuel, just as the Nazis did in Germany when its oil supplies were cut off during the second world war. Tests are now being conducted and the first of 6,000 navy jets are expected to fly with it next year.
Coal-based synthetic fuels, and biofuels - from both algae and crops such as corn - are now strong contenders to replace the fuels that the military uses to power its tanks and jet engines, says the Department of defence . But the search for more affordable, cleaner-burning alternative fuels is not driven by environmental concerns and there are massive drawbacks. Coal is not just one of the world's prime drivers of man-made climate change, but also air pollution and acid rain.
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16 Comments so far
Show AllI suspect the Navy will go for small nukes to power their ships. The Army will probably go for biofuels, thereby raising the price of food worldwide and starving large numbers of people. The Air Force has no choice but to use oil. Most biofuels are not suitable for aircraft. Alcohol, for example, is not sufficiently energy-dense to provide decent fuel. All the Armed Forces will attempt to conserve fuel, though the conservation ethic is not well grounded among the military. Mostly conservative, officers believe we can drill our way out of this impasse (or invade countries with oil). Afraid they are mistaken on this one.
They're going to be starved out of making war. How hilarious
As I mentioned on the Olbermann post today, when we start suffering huge fuel shortages in this country, the military will get first dibs on fuel.
The point is, there is NEVER going to be a "recovery" because our economy was built to live on cheap fossil fuels, and without them, global industrial capitalism is going to go into a Permanent Contraction and decomplexification. And the military-industrial complex and the transnational-corporate elite are surely making plans on how THEY intend to survive no matter how bad life gets for the rest of us.
The american people are about to go into shock when they realize how permanently broke they are, how the world they knew is going to disappear - forever! Neo-feudalism or neo-fascism might arise, within a general landscape of an anarchic "war of all against all."
Very well said.
I've been citing a movie title for years to characterize what the socio-economic condition in the US would eventually be. Your final statement summerizes. The English title is "Kaspar Hauser", but the German title is "Jeder für sich, Gott gegen Alle". Every man for himself, God against all.
What irony. The US war machine has been used to secure access to oil, but now we find we can't get enough to keep the machine going. It's like a crack addict who can't get enough crack to keep himself going so he can continue to find more crack. Maybe this will finally push our government to employ real diplomacy and cooperation instead of the threat of force. Most likely not.
As bankers say, "push come to shove, the elite and our weaponry will be just fine;
it is the little people that will have to be.... disposed of. Pity."
"The US military spent around $8bn in 2004 on fuel, and probably twice that last year."
That amount of money is not nearly enough to bring the military to a halt. Ten times that amount would not do it either. 100 times that would slow them down a lot, because without slowing down, that would mean that all of the military budget is spent on fuel. 100 times that would halve the effectiveness of the US military and force them to use alternatives.
I would compare it to the costs of owning a car. Maintenance and the original cost of purchase are still larger costs than that of fuel.
I thought the Wars were all about their 'alternative' energy sources...
This article is accurate enough on its face, but the theme is one of unwarranted optimism.
The overlords know that fuel prices are going up. That is not an impediment to military action. That is among its major motivations. Accordingly, barring some unforeseeable event, like sufficient social unrest to disturb the supply lines, the US will not be starved out of the military business. Rather, whoever controls that military will suck up the rest of the fuel, and hang on to the last of it in order to dictate terms based on energy rationing and direct force.
I don't read minds better than the next person, but if we assume only that US policy over recent decades holds some consistent purpose from administration and that that purpose has some relation to the perceived self-interest of those who run it, certain large-line observations have to be at least fairly probable.
To whit --
those who control US policy have decided that rather than working on cooperative solutions to the array of upcoming problems, they will concentrate on maintaining position in order to dictate terms most effectively when the catastrophe hits.
When it does, we can expect a concatenation of opportunistic shifts in control, along the lines of centralization of power in Latin America into the 80's or an extension of what has already happened in the US since 1980,and which has accelerated since 2000.
If peak oil is good news, it is only because we will eventually stop poisoning ourselves by burning it. But there are plenty of reasons to expect that the last drop of petroleum will fuel a Lear jet engaged in an air show, or to drop one last bomb on a agricultural village.
This is a kind of a circular argument. Because of peak oil we have to go to war and grab the oil before somebody else does. Support the troops and support the food stamps program.
they'll just have to make do with smaller tanks.
"The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society..."
---George Orwell 1984
"I can hire one half of the working-class to kill the other half."
--Jay Gould, Gilded Age rail tycoon and real estate speculator
After what I recently learned about how much lithium (a very costly and finite resource) is required for electric cars, and how 40% of it is wasted after lithium "battery recycling," and how necessary it will be for other uses by future generations, I'm glad I've already adapted to a bicycle/mass transport lifestyle even though it took long-term unemployment and harsh poverty by pre-2008 U.S. standards to push me into it.
Heh.
When the real Peak Oil crunch comes, the US will be sending troops overseas to march in formation, using black power rifles because modern firearms use petroleum based gunpowder, arriving at the target destination on wind powered cutters and the like.
Think of it... Napoleonic tactics backed up by satellite communications...
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
Horace: "Force without judgment will fall of its own weight."
"Surging world fuel prices are likely to put the brakes on the US oil war machine as much as political opposition...the search for more affordable, cleaner-burning alternative fuels is not driven by environmental concerns and there are massive drawbacks. Coal is not just one of the world's prime drivers of man-made climate change, but also air pollution and acid rain."
Coal is also a driver of mercury in fish, mountain top removal devastation and toxic slag.