Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 7, 1993 TAG: 9311070237
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MATTHEW L. WALD The New York Times News Service
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The United States today uses almost as much oil as it did then, but imports 44.6 percent of it, up from 37.2 percent in 1973. At the time of the embargo, 5.3 percent of the oil used here came from Arab members of OPEC; now it is 11.6 percent.
Then our largest supplier was Venezuela, which is geographically and culturally close to the United States; now it is Saudi Arabia, which is neither.
Then, we imported oil to help drive our cars and trucks 1.3 trillion miles a year; today we drive 2.2 trillion.
Some of the people most concerned about energy say none of this should come as a surprise. "The only thing we learn from history is we learn nothing from history," said James Schlesinger, a former defense secretary and head of the CIA, who was the "energy czar" during the second oil crisis, in 1979.
Everyone who thinks about it agrees that some supplies are shaky. Venezuela, now the second-largest supplier to this country, has had two coup attempts this year.
Nigeria, No. 5, is also unstable. Saudi Arabia, No. 1 at 1.5 million barrels of the 8.5 million barrels imported each day, faces religious strains.
Production from stable, friendly places, like Texas and Oklahoma, continues to dwindle; domestic production is down by about 2 million barrels a day over the 20-year period, despite tapping the Alaskan fields. The oil industry wants import tariffs or tax incentives, along with access to areas that environmentalists want protected.
Environmentalists like heavier taxes on gasoline, and on Oct. 1 the federal tax rose by 4.3 cents a gallon, as much as Congress would stand for but not as much in the average motorist's weekly budget as a morning newspaper costs.
"Our energy policy is to take the cheapest oil in the world, regardless of source, and take our chances that it will continue to be cheap and available," said William K. Tell Jr., senior vice president of Texaco.
On the consumption side, the problem is partly technology but mostly will. A federal standard established after the embargo sets average mileage at 27.5, and the Environmental Protection Agency said in a recent report that manufacturers have no incentive to do better.
While the manufacturers are getting more from a gallon of gasoline these days, they are applying the gains to performance, not mileage.
The average time to accelerate from 0 to 60 miles an hour was 14 seconds in 1974, and is now about 11.5 seconds, thanks to multi-valve engines and other technical improvements.
If Detroit had interrupted that trend in 1984, when the average time was about 13.4 seconds, and applied all subsequent improvements to fuel economy, average miles per gallon would be about 30 instead of 27.5, the agency believes.
"We have testosterone cars instead of efficient cars," said Daniel F. Becker, an energy expert at the Sierra Club in Washington.
Detroit does, in fact, build some efficient cars. The Coalition for Vehicle Choice, a lobby backed by the auto makers, analyzed the EPA statistics on the 1994 models and pointed out that the 10 models with the highest ratings, 43 miles a gallon to 58 miles a gallon, "represent less than 2 percent of all passenger cars sold."
Becker's response is that Detroit doesn't try very hard to sell the efficient ones.
But the trend to indulge the vehicular equivalent of hormones leads some consumers into vehicles less efficient than cars.
"The industry's gone to tremendous efforts to improve the fuel economy of cars, but for the fleet as a whole we're losing it to trucks," said Robert M. Heavenrich, an automotive specialist at the EPA, who noted that 4 of 10 vehicles sold are light-duty trucks.
Among the top 10 most popular vehicles in the last model year were four pickups and a van.
Are there any grounds for optimism? Maybe a few.
For one, the world's largest oil producer, the Soviet Union, collapsed in the early '90s with barely a ripple in the market.
For another, some exporting companies are unlikely now to cut off supplies to consuming nations' distributors, because the exporters ARE the distributors; the Saudis own half of Texaco's eastern retailing system, and the Venezuelans have invested heavily in Citgo.
There is no more Soviet Union to march into the Persian Gulf. At least at the moment, there is no more Arab-Israeli conflict. And there is recent evidence, from the invasion of Kuwait, that war in the oil fields does not mean a catastrophic reduction in supplies.
American Petroleum Institute president Charles DiBona said, "Although we're importing a larger fraction, there's also more oil in the world than there was then." It seems unlikely, but world reserves now are nearly 50 times annual consumption, the highest ratio ever.
"The idea that we're running out is getting to be sort of weak," he said. "The idea of weaning yourself off oil with expensive methods makes less sense."
There are reasons to be wary of imports, though, he said, among them the tremendous cost. In 1973, spending on oil imports was $23.9 billion, and total trade deficit was a paltry $3.9 billion; last year, oil imports cost $44.8 billion and total deficit was $84.5 billion.
Eventually, the habit will have to change, said Becker of the Sierra Club. The deciding factor may not be the stability of distant countries; it may turn out to be pollution or global warming, or the realization that this resource should be shared with future generations.
No matter how much oil is found, Becker said, it is a finite resource: "After all, they're not making new dinosaurs."
by CNB