From the report website:
The inaugural work of the Commission on Energy and Geopolitics, “Oil Security 2025: U.S. National Security Policy in an Era of Domestic Oil Abundance,” explores the potential for U.S. oil production to impact American foreign policy and national security in the coming decade and presents a series of recommendations designed to safeguard and advance U.S. interests.
Link to full report (PDF) Released January 15, 2014
Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
US still vulnerable to oil shocks, say generals
Ed Crooks, Financial Times
The US remains vulnerable to oil price shocks caused by disruptions in the Middle East and other producing regions in spite of the North American shale boom, a commission of former generals and senior officials has warned.
(15 January 2014)
How the oil boom could change U.S. foreign policy
Brad Blumer, WonkBlog, Washington post
The United States is suddenly awash in crude oil. From 2008 to 2013, domestic oil production rose by 2.5 million barrels per day — the biggest five-year increase in the country’s history. Last year, U.S. produced more oil than it imported for the first time since 1995.
So what does that mean for the rest of the world? Or for U.S. foreign policy? Well, for starters, it probably doesn’t mean that Americans can now safely ignore the Middle East. The U.S. economy is still heavily reliant on oil, and prices are still largely swayed by what goes on in the global markets. Disruptions in places like Saudi Arabia, Iran or Iraq still have a big impact. That’s one conclusion of a major new report by a commission of former generals and senior officials, backed by Securing America’s Energy Future (SAFE).
"The oil boom has sparked a lot of loose talk about how we can now ignore what goes on in the Middle East," said Adm. Dennis Blair, a former director of National Intelligence who led the commission, in an interview Tuesday. "But that’s just not true."
Blair pointed out that the oil boom has already had some impact on U.S. foreign policy. For example, increased North American oil production likely allowed the United States and Europe to impose stricter sanctions on Iran without worrying as much about resulting price spikes. There are also early, tentative signs that China could become more cooperative on Middle East issues now that the fast-growing nation has displaced the United States as the biggest oil importer from the region.
But what’s arguably more telling is how much hasn’t changed. Even with the boom, the United States is still quite vulnerable to oil shocks…
(16 January 2014)
Report: Energy boom won’t end US ties to global oil politics
Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Fuelfix
National security leaders are warning that, even as ever more crude flows from American fields, the U.S. still will be tethered to the global politics of oil and involved in unstable regions that supply it.
In a report issued Wednesday, a group of former military brass, presidential advisers, ambassadors and politicians insist that it’s an illusion that surging U.S. oil production could unshackle the nation’s foreign policy decisions from concerns about safeguarding worldwide crude supplies.
“This is an antidote to those who just glibly say more oil production means we’re free of foreign entanglements,” said Adm. Dennis Blair, the former director of national intelligence, and co-chairman of the Commission on Energy and Geopolitics that produced the 108-page analysis.
“We Americans like to think we can produce our way and work our way out of something,” Blair said in an interview with FuelFix. “Unfortunately, the fact that we are now drilling as much oil as we are is not going to, in and of itself, keep America out of the vulnerable situation and the series of entanglements in places around the world that we have been in the past.”…
(15 January 2014)
