June 05, 2010 05:01 AM UTC

Screw the Environment: Outsourcing Oil Production to the Third World

• 4 Comments
• by: CoalCreekWildfire

“U.S. Peak Oil” was in 1970 at 9.64 million barrels per day (MB/D). By 2007 production fell by half to 4.96 MB/D.

At the same time U.S. oil consumption rose 41% from 14.7 MB/D (1970) to 20.7 MB/D (2007). We now import 3 barrels out of 4 from China, Russia, Mexico, the OPEC nations, and Canada.

The New York Times points out that:

Moratoriums [on U.S. based oil production] have a moral problem, though. All oil comes from someone’s backyard, and when we don’t reduce the amount of oil we consume, and refuse to drill at home, we end up getting people to drill for us in Kazakhstan, Angola and Nigeria – places without America’s strong environmental safeguards or the resources to enforce them.

Kazakhstan, for one, had no comprehensive environmental laws until 2007, and Nigeria has suffered spills equivalent to that of the Exxon Valdez every year since 1969. (As of last year, Nigeria had 2,000 active spills.) Since the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, and the more than 40 Earth Days that have followed, Americans have increased by two-thirds the amount of petroleum we consume in our cars, while nearly quadrupling the quantity we import. Effectively, we’ve been importing oil and exporting spills to villages and waterways all over the world.

We artificially reduced the supply of oil for over 30 years, hoping to accelerate wind and solar development. All it did was push production off-shore, to countries that value the environment far less than we do.

Sources

Annual Energy Review: Table 11.5 World Crude Oil Production, U.S. Energy Information Administration, 1970 to 2009 (viewed 6/4/2010), http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/int…

History of the United States Department of Energy, Wikipedia, viewed 6/4/2010,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U…

Lisa Margonelli, A Spill of Our Own, New York Times, 5/1/2010 (viewed 6/4/2010), http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05…

Crude Oil Production, U.S. Energy Information Administration, 01/1920 to 03/2010 (viewed 6/4/2010), http://www.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pe…