The Likely Impact of Global Oil Peak on the United States

Throughout most of the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries the US was the world's foremost oil producing and exporting nation; it was also the first important producing nation to pass its all-time oil production peak, which occurred in 1971. The impacts on the US of its own oil peak for the nation's economy and foreign policy are rarely discussed in that country, but they have been considerable. Thus America is emblematic for understanding world oil history and the approaching global extraction peak. Each nation will be impacted differently by global oil peak. While the types of impacts that are likely to be seen in the US can be extrapolated elsewhere, effects in this instance will be more pronounced because of America's extreme and arguably unmatched economic dependence on petroleum. America's original endowment of recoverable oil is estimated at somewhat less than 200 billion barrels , of which 170 billion (or about 90 percent) have been extracted (ASPO, 2002). Current production of conventional oil, including from offshore areas and Alaska, is about 5.5 million barrels per day; non-conventional sources yield a little more than 2 million barrels per day. Present US consumption stands at 21 million barrels per day, imports accounting for nearly 60 percent of usage. (EIA, 2005) The US has the highest per-capita consumption rate of oil for any large country, and is the world's foremost oil user and importer. Well over 97 percent of US transportation energy comes from petroleum, and Americans are the most mobile people on the planet: there are more autos in the country than there are licensed drivers-about 210 million total. Petroleum dependency has been systematically encouraged through car-centered urban design and the failure to provide public transportation alternatives to the private automobile. The peak of per-capita public transportation usage occurred in the 1940s; following this, the nation invested hundreds of billions of dollars in its Interstate Highway System , effectively a subsidy to the auto and oil companies ; simultaneously, it invested heavily in civilian air transport while systematically dismantling its interurban rail and urban light rail systems. Often this dismantling proceeded by way of illegal collusion between an auto manufacturer (General Motors), an oil company (Standard Oil of California) and a tire company (Firestone), which acted together to buy up and destroy urban trolley lines. The US was also the center of modern agricultural developments-the widespread deployment of petrochemical …