Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

The Oil and Gas Weapon Won't Work


Mar 13, 2014 03:00 am | Daniel L. Davis, Jeremy Leggett
After many weeks of political chaos and bloodshed in Kiev, Moscow sent soldiers across the frontier into the Crimea on February 27, claiming it aimed to protect the Russian-speaking population. Writing in the Washington Post on March 7, former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice captured the essence of many in the US who advocate using oil as a weapon against Russia. She wrote that “soon, North America’s bounty of oil and gas will swamp Moscow’s capacity. Authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline and championing natural gas exports would signal that we intend to do precisely that.” Secretary Rice’s assumptions regarding the state of US tight oil and gas as “bountiful” are common among many opinion leaders in the West. They also happen to be wrong.
Before contemplating the use of US oil and gas as a strategic weapon, it might be useful to review a few key fundamentals. First, consider the following oil production, consumption and import/export numbers reported by British Petroleum for 2012. Russia produced 10.6 million barrels per day (mbd), consumed 3.2 mbd, leaving 7.4 mbd available for export. The United States produced 8.9 mbd, consumed 18.5 mbd, and imported 10.5 mbd.
read morehttp://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-oil-gas-weapon-wont-work-10041

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