R. James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, “How to End America’s Addiction to Oil.” In it Mr. Woolsey looks at the failed efforts in the past to wean America from foreign oil (coal gasification, hydrogen fuel cells, etc.).
“So far every national policy we’ve tried to end our oil addiction has failed [because] it was too easy for OPEC to drive prices down and crush such costly competition.”
“OPEC,” he writes, has very large reserves and cheap extraction costs” so they are raise and lower prices to control and maximize the market, not in response to actual expenditures.
He suggests that one of the answers is to:
“Pay attention to T. Boone Pickens’s recommendations to switch to natural gas for fleet vehicles such as buses, and for interstate trucking. Buses and trucks are easily modified to run on natural gas and would only require new pumps at a few central locations and interstate truck stops.”
As a national security expert, Mr. Woolsey reminds readers that:
“Oil profits enhance the ability of dictators and autocrats to dominate their people. … Eight of the top nine oil exporters (Norway is the exception) are dictatorships or autocratic kingdoms, as are virtually all of the 22 states that depend on oil and gas for at least two-thirds of their exports.”
In addition to going to natural gas vehicles (NGVs) Woolsey also calls for using bio-methane “produced from waste and algae,” multi-fuel vehicles, and more “plug-in hybrids.”
“We can get a long way using existing vehicles, existing technology and affordable natural gas.”
Mr. Woolsey compares the current situation with President Theodore Roosevelt breaking the Standard Oil cartel “into 30 pieces.” He calls on President Obama to carry the same big stick by concluding:
“President Obama, meet your cartel. It’s called OPEC.”
— The Pickens Team