We Are Now in the Terminal Stage of Our Fossil-Fuel Addiction
Senior politicians in both parties have become so intoxicated by the idea of an American surge in energy production that they have lost their senses.By Michael T. Klare
(The Nation) – Of all the preposterous, irresponsible headlines that have appeared on the front page of The New York Times in recent years, few have exceeded the inanity of this one from early March: “US Hopes Boom in Natural Gas Can Curb Putin.” The article by normally reliable reporters Coral Davenport and Steven Erlanger suggested that, by sending our surplus natural gas to Europe and Ukraine in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the United States could help reduce the region’s heavy reliance on Russian gas and thereby stiffen its resistance to Vladimir Putin’s aggressive behavior.
Forget that the United States currently
lacks the capacity to export LNG to Europe, and will not be able to do
so on a significant scale until the 2020s. Forget that Ukraine lacks any
LNG receiving facilities and is unlikely to acquire any, as its only
coastline is on the Black Sea, in areas dominated by Russian speakers
with loyalties to Moscow. Forget as well that any future US exports will
be funneled into the international marketplace, and so will favor
sales to Asia where gas prices are 50 percent higher than in Europe.
Just focus on the article’s central reportorial flaw: it fails to
identify a single reason why future American LNG exports (which could
wind up anywhere) would have any influence whatsoever on the Russian
president’s behavior. 
The only way to understand the strangeness of this is to assume that the editors of the Times,
like senior politicians in both parties, have become so intoxicated by
the idea of an American surge in oil and gas production that they have
lost their senses. As domestic output of oil and gas has increased in recent years—largely through the use of fracking to exploit hitherto impenetrable shale deposits—many policymakers have concluded that the United States is better positioned to throw its weight around in the world. “Increasing US energy supplies,” said then-presidential security adviser Tom Donilon in April 2013, “affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our international security goals.” Leaders in Congress on both sides of the aisle have voiced similar views.
The impression one gets from all this balderdash is that increased oil and gas output—like an extra dose of testosterone—will somehow bolster the will and confidence of American officials when confronting their foreign counterparts. One former White House official cited by Davenport and Erlanger caught the mood of the moment perfectly: “We’re engaging from a different position [with respect to Russia] because we’re a much larger energy producer.”
It should be obvious to
anyone who has followed recent events in the Crimea and Ukraine that increased US oil and gas output have provided White House officials with no particular advantage in their efforts to counter Putin’s aggressive moves—and that the prospect of future US gas exports to Europe is unlikely to alter his strategic calculations. It seems, however, that senior US officials beguiled by the mesmerizing image of a future “Saudi America” have simply lost touch with reality.
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