Abstract
Doug Stokes and Sam Raphael in their volume, Global Energy Security and American Hegemony, point to the overtly hegemonic dynamics of US foreign policy in relationship to oil.1 US dominance of the world’s petroleum gives it strategic leverage over virtually every country in the world. America’s tar sands policy is consistent with this.
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Notes
Doug Stokes and Sam Raphael, Global Energy Security and American Hegemony (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); also see Andrew T. Price-Smith, Oil, Illiberalism, and War: An Analysis of Energy and US Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015).
Francisco Parra, Oil Politics: A Modern History of Petroleum (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004); Harvey Blatt, America’s Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 100; Roy L. Nersesian, Energy for the 21st Century (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2007), 205; John S. Duffield, Over a Barrel: The Costs of U.S. Foreign Oil Dependence (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008); Steffen Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and the State in Saudi Arabia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010).
Peter O. Muller, Contemporary Suburban America (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1981); Robert A. Beauregard, When America Became Suburban (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006); Paul L. Knox, Metroburbia, USA (Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 2008).
Mark S. Foster, From Streetcar to Superhighway: American City Planners and Urban Transportation, 1900–1940 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981); Jeffrey R. Kenworthy and Felix B. Laube, with Peter Newman, Paul Barter, Tamim Raad, Chamlong Poboon, and Benedicto Guia, Jr., An International Sourcebook of Automobile Dependence in Cities 1960–1990 (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1999).
Blair, The Control of Oil; Ed Shaffer, The United States and the Control of World Oil (New York: St. Martin’s, 1983); George Philip, The Political Economy of International Oil (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994).
American Petroleum Institute, Petroleum Facts and Figures: Centennial Edition (New York: American Petroleum Institute, 1959), 246–247.
Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991); Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Blair, The Control of Oil; Ed Shaffer, The United States and the Control of World Oil; Richard H. Vietor, Energy Policy in America since 1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Philip, The Political Economy of International Oil; Ian Rutledge, Addicted to Oil: America’s Relentless Drive for Energy Security (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005); Rachel Bronson, Thicker than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); John G. Ikenberry, Reasons of State: Oil Politics and the Capacities of American Government (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988); Simon Bromley, American Hegemony and World Oil: The Industry, the State System and the World Economy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991); Steve A. Yetiv, Crude Awakenings: Global Oil Security and American Foreign Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), and Explaining Foreign Policy: U.S. Decision-Making in the Gulf Wars (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011); Robert J. Pauly, Jr., U.S. Foreign Policy and the Persian Gulf: Safeguarding American Interests through Selective Multilateralism (Burlington: Ashgate, 2005).
Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on United States Energy Policy, Providing for Energy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977), 23, emphasis in original.
Ibid., 23–24.
Ibid., 24.
Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the International Oil Crisis, Paying for Energy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), 15.
Committee for Economic Development, Achieving Energy Independence: A Statement on National Policy (New York: Committee for Economic Development, 1974), 30.
Ibid., 6.
“Energy Efficiency Fails to Cut Consumption—Study,” Reuters, November 27, 2007; Horace Herring and Steve Sorrell, eds. Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Consumption: The Rebound Effect (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Coral Davenport, “Amid Pipeline and Climate Debate, Energy-Efficiency Bill Is Derailed,” New York Times, May 13, 2014, A12; Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, “The Problem With Energy Efficiency,” New York Times, October 9, 2014, A35.
Winston Harrington and Virginia McConnell, Resources for the Future Report: Motor Vehicles and the Environment (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2003), chaps. 6 and 7.
Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2003 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, 2004), 57; Light-Duty Automotive Technology, Carbon Dioxide Emissions, and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975 Through 2012 (Washington, DC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2013), iii.
The U.S. Energy Department reports that in 2007, 8.9 million barrels of oil per day (mb/d) were used to power the US automobile fleet (including light trucks and motorcycles). In a sluggish economy, the amount of oil used to power the US automotive fleet went from 8.7 mb/d in 2008 to 8 mb/d in 2013. Automotive, motorcycle, bus, and truck driving in the United States consumed a total of 12.8 mb/d in 2013. Global petroleum production 2007 through 2013 ranged annually from 81 mb/d to 86 mb/d. Stacy C. Davis, Susan W. Diegel, and Robert G. Boundy, Transportation Energy Data Book, 34th ed. (Washington, DC: Department of Energy, 2015), table 1.3, chap. 1, p. 4; table 1.14, chap. 1, p. 21.
While American oil consumption peaked around 20.7 million barrels per day from (mb/d) 2004 to 2007, the economic recession resulted in a decline of petroleum use in the United States to roughly 19 mb/d from 2008 to 2014. Davis, Diegel, and Boundy, Transportation Energy Data Book, table 1.4, chap. 1, p. 5. By way of comparison, the International Energy Agency reported that oil consumption in the European Union in 2009 was 12.2 mb/d. European Union oil consumption in 2011 was 11.6 mb/d and 10.6 mb/d in 2014. The European Union in 2009 had a population of 500 million, whereas the United States had one of 300 million. China, with about 20 percent of the global population, in 2009 consumed 8.1 mb/d. Oil consumption in China in 2011 was 9 mb/d and 10.5 mb/d in 2014. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2010 (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2010), 105; International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2012 (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2012), table 3.2, p. 85; International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2015 (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2015), table 3.2, p. 119; US consumption of oil for 2009 was 22 barrels per capita, or per person. In China it was 2.4 barrels. Jad Mouawad, “China’s Growth Shifts the Geopolitics of Oil,” New York Times, March 19, 2010, B1.
Philip, The Political Economy of International Oil, 195; Paul Roberts, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004); Rutledge, Addicted to Oil, chap. 1; Matthew L. Wald, “When It Comes to Replacing Oil Imports, Nuclear Is No Easy Option, Experts Say,” New York Times, May 9, 2005, A14; Bruce Podobnik, Global Energy Shifts: Fostering Sustainability in a Turbulent Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), chaps. 5 and 6; Duffield, Over a Barrel, chap. 2.
Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), and The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (New York: Penguin, 2011); Steve Coll, Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power (New York: Penguin, 2013).
Tim Weiner, “Man in the News: John Mark Deutch; Reluctant Helmsman for a Troubled Agency,” New York Times, March 11, 1995. Web; Mark Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth (New York: Penguin, 2013), 16.
Michael A. Levi, The Canadian Oil Sands: Energy Security vs. Climate Change (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2009), 45.
Richard N. Haas, “Foreword” in The Canadian Oil Sands: Energy Security vs. Climate Change, by Michael A. Levi (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2009), vii.
Laurence Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977); G. William Domhoff, The Power Elite and the State (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1990), chap. 5.
Laurence H. Shoup, “Shaping the National Interest: The Council on Foreign Relations, the Department of State, and the Origins of the Postwar World, 1939–1943” (PhD Thesis: Northwestern University 1974), 42.
Inderjeet Parmar, “The Issue of State Power: The Council on Foreign Relations as a Case Study,” Journal of American Studies 29, no. 1 (1995): 73–95, “‘Mobilizing America for an Internationalist Foreign Policy’: The Role of the Council on Foreign Relations,” Studies in American Political Development 13 (Fall 1999): 337–373, and Think Tanks and Power in Foreign Policy: A Comparative Study of the Role and Influence of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1939–1945 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Harly Notter, Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, 1939–1945 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949 [1973]); Shoup, “Shaping the National Interest”; Shoup and Miner, Imperial Brain Trust; Robert D. Schulzinger, The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs: The History of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); Domhoff, Power Elite and the State, chap. 5; Parmar, “The Issue of State Power”, “‘Mobilizing America for an Internationalist Foreign Policy’”, and Think Tanks and Power in Foreign Policy; Neil Smith, American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Louis Armand, Some Aspects of the European Energy Problem: Suggestions for Collective Action (Paris: Organization for European Cooperation, 1955).
Commission for Energy, Europe’s Growing Needs of Energy: How Can They Be Met? (Paris: Organisation for European Economic Co-Operation, 1956), 25.
Ibid., 73.
Ibid., 26.
Ibid., 73.
Ibid., 56.
Energy Advisory Commission, Towards a New Energy Pattern in Europe (Paris: Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, 1960), 13–14.
Ibid., 83.
Ibid., 61
Ibid., 83–84.
Shaffer, The United States and the Control of World Oil, chap. 7; Torleif Haugland, Helge Ole Bergensen, and Kjell Roland, Energy Structures and Environmental Futures (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 55.
Haugland et al., Energy Structures and Environmental Futures, 33; also see James Dunn, Miles to Go: European and American Transportation Policies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981); Nigel Lucas, Western European Energy Policies: A Comparative Study of the Influence of Institutional Structures on Technical Change (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985).
Harvey Blatt, America’s Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade?, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 142–143.
Simon Romero, “Oil-Rich Norwegians Take World’s Highest Gasoline Prices in Stride,” New York Times, April 30, 2005, C1; also see Molly O’Meara Sheehan, City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 2001).
Frank N. Laird, Solar Energy, Technology Policy, and Institutional Values (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Travis Bradford, Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
Dorothy Nelkin and Michael Pollak, The Atom Besieged: Antinuclear Movements in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981).
Irvin C. Bupp and Jean-Claude Derian, The Failed Promise of Nuclear Power: The Story of Light Water (New York: Basic Books, 1978); Peter Stoett, “Toward Renewed Legitimacy? Nuclear Power, Global Warming, and Security,” Global Environmental Politics 3, no. 1 (2003): 99–116; Jane Dawson and Robert Darst, “Meeting the Challenge of Permanent Nuclear Waste Disposal in an Expanding Europe: Transparency, Trust and Democracy,” Environmental Politics 15, no. 4 (2006); 610–627; Robert Vandenbosch and Susanne E. Vandenbosch, Nuclear Waste Stalemate: Political and Scientific Controversies (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2007); Max S. Power, America’s Nuclear Wastelands: Politics, Accountability, and Cleanup (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2008); Matthew L. Wald, “As Nuclear Waste Languishes, Expense to U.S. Rises,” New York Times, February 17, 2008, A22; Matthew L. Wald, “A Safer Nuclear Crypt,” New York Times, July 6, 2011, B1; William M. Alley and Rosemarie Alley, Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Matthew L. Wald, “Texas Company, Alone in U.S., Cashes In on Nuclear Waste,” New York Times, January 21, 2014, B1; Matthew L. Wald, “Nuclear Waste Solution Seen in Desert Salt Beds,” New York Times, February 10, 2014, A9; Matthew L. Wald, “Nuclear Waste Is Allowed Above Ground Indefinitely,” New York Times, August 30, 2014, A13.
Michael T. Hatch, Politics and Nuclear Power: Energy Policy in Western Europe (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986).
James M. Jasper, Nuclear Politics: Energy and the State in the United States, Sweden, and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Steven Erlanger, “French Plans For Energy Reaffirm Nuclear Path,” New York Times, August 17, 2008, A6; Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009); David Jolly, “France Went All Out for Nuclear Energy,” New York Times, May 7, 2015. Web.
Henry Nau, National Politics and International Technology: Nuclear Reactor Development in Western Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974); James Kanter, “German Chancellor Calls for Tests of Europe’s Nuclear Reactors,” New York Times, March 24, 2011, B3.
Between 1981 and 1986, US daily consumption of petroleum increased by 120,000 barrels, whereas Western Europe consumption dropped 490,000 barrels. Philip, The Political Economy of International Oil, 195; also see Hatch, Politics and Nuclear Power; Peter Nijkamp, Sustainable Cities in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Urban Energy-Environmental Policies (London: Earthscan, 1994); Frank J. Convery, ed. A Guide to Policies for Energy Conservation: The European Experience (Northampton: Edward Elgar, 1998); Haugland et al., Energy Structures and Environmental Futures; Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley, and Heather Boyer, Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2009).
Andrew Jordan, Dave Huitema, Harro van Asselt, Tim Rayner, and Frans Berkhout eds. Climate Change Policy in the European Union: Confronting the Dilemmas of Mitigation and Adaptation? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
David Buchan, Energy and Climate Change: Europe at the Crossroads (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Caterina De Lucia, Environmental Policies for Air Pollution and Climate Change in the New Europe (New York: Routledge, 2010); Antonio Marquina, ed. Global Warming and Climate Change: Prospects and Policies in Asia and Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Castle, “European Union Proposes Easing Of Climate Rules.”
Curt Gasteyger, ed. The Future for European Energy Security (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985); George W. Hoffman, The European Energy Challenge: East and West (Durham: Duke University Press, 1985); Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Germany Dims Nuclear Plants, but Hopes to Keep Lights On,” New York Times, August 30, 2011, A1; John S. Duffield, Fuels Paradise: Seeking Energy Security in Europe, Japan, and the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).
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© 2016 George A. Gonzalez
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Gonzalez, G.A. (2016). Global Oil Politics. In: American Empire and the Canadian Oil Sands. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137539564_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137539564_6
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