Published on 30 Apr 2005 by CNN In the Money. Archived on 2 May 2005.
What's the Real Price of Gas? (Interview with Michael Klare)
by Jack Cafferty
CAFFERTY: .... America wants cheap oil so much and wants so much cheap oil that it's affecting everything from the deals we do to the company we keep. One example from this week, those pictures of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah holding hands with President Bush. Just imagine, for a minute, how American life and policy would be different if we didn't have such a big thing for oil.
Michael Klare is going to talk us through that scenario. He's the author of "Blood for Oil." He's a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and he's been with us before. Mike, nice to see you, welcome back.
MICHAEL KLARE, HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE: Pleasure to be with you again.
CAFFERTY: In October, you said the world runs out of oil in 30 to 40 years. There's an old Hank Snow tune called "90 Miles an Hour Down a Dead-End Street" and it seems to me that that song and our predicament, vis-a-vis, the world supply of crude oil, have a lot in common. Do you hold with that timetable and how urgent is it that we do something besides what we're doing here?
KLARE: Well, you know in 30 or 40 years, oil may be gone entirely and we have plenty of time to worry about that. But sooner than then, much sooner than then, oil is not going to be as available as it used to be in the past. And we're beginning to see that now, with the higher prices, the shortages of crude oil around the world. In other words, the hardships from declining oil are with us now and they're only going to get worse.
LISOVICZ: Professor Klare, we were just talking about the president's obstacles in trying to push his package on Social Security. There's also the energy initiatives he's proposed. Would you characterize any of them as proactive? In other words, are there incentives for Detroit to switch to hybrids, other sources of energy, like wind power, for instance?
KLARE: It's really a very small amount of effort in that bill. It's really not going to make a substantial difference until the president calls for significant increases in the fuel efficiency of American vehicles, mandatory increases in fuel efficiency. These other things are not going to make very much of a big difference, certainly not in the short term.
SERWER: Michael, as professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, I would suspect you're not an advocate of nuclear power. And yet, the French have done very well with nuclear power. And there is of course that famous line that no one has ever died of a nuclear power plant accident in this country. Shouldn't we revisit nukes?
KLARE: Well there are two problems here. First of all, our addiction to oil is mainly about transportation. We use 70 percent our petroleum for automobiles and truck and buses and planes and all of the rest. And more nuclear power is not going to solve that problem. That's where our addiction to petroleum is so great. So there's that problem. Secondly, we haven't solved the nuclear waste problem. And as you've probably know, information come from Nevada about the Yucca Mountain repository suggests it may not be as safe as was once said. So we have a problem with the waste and we have a problem with our addiction to oil for transportation that nuclear power won't solve.
CAFFERTY: The author of your - or the title of your book is "Blood and Oil." Talk to me for a moment about what you see unfolding in the next couple of decades perhaps, as the supply of crude oil continues to dwindle, the price continue to rise and the sources of this continue to be in some of the most volatile and troublesome and most hateful regions of the world when it come to the United States. We're talking about obviously the Middle East, but there are other places as well that are huge repositories of oil that don't exactly think we're the guys in the white hats.
KLARE: Everybody has to understand first of all that there's an historic shift taking place in where our oil is coming from. It used to be, you know, from North America, primarily. But because we've used up a lot of our domestic supplies and nearby supplies, more and more of our oil in the future will come from the Middle East, from Africa, from Venezuela, from places, as you say that are unstable. And the fact that we rely on those countries means that we get more deeply entwined in the politics of those countries. We're often closely allied with their leaders. And their leaders may not be so popular. We're very close to the Saudi royal family, as we were saying earlier this week Crown Prince Abdullah visiting President Bush in Crawford, Texas. There are a lot of people in Saudi Arabia who think that the Saudi royal family is corrupt, that they've strayed from Islam, that they're too closely aligned with the west. So by our alliance with these countries, we, in fact, are inviting opposition, inviting hostility that could take violent forms.
LISOVICZ: Professor, we also face problems with our allies. One of the reasons why we've been seeing these record prices with oil is because of the demand from China and India where their economies are growing much faster than the U.S. Could you envision down the road a real face-off, especially with China, over access to oil?
KLARE: Absolutely. China's the fastest growing economy in the world. Their oil needs are growing faster than anyone else. Now, they're not quite at the level that we are in this country, but they're gaining on us. And because they're late-comers to the energy and oil business, they're scurrying around the world to find whatever pockets of oil they can get their hands on. And this could lead to clashes with the United States. Because they're going to countries that we don't have very friendly relations with, like Iran, like Sudan and the Chinese are developing close ties with those countries, providing them with weapons. This could be the spark for conflict down the road.
SERWER: Michael, quick last question here. What do you think about this whole issue that our real problem is we don't have enough refineries in this country, something the president was talking about recently?
KLARE: Well, refineries are what we need to convert crude oil into gasoline. And it's certainly true that if we had more refinery capacity, that would ease the problem of refining -- of producing more gasoline and motor fuels. But if crude oil remains scarce and the price of crude oil remains high, which appears to be the case, more refinery capacity isn't going to bring gasoline prices down.
CAFFERTY: Interesting stuff. And my sense is Mike that we'll be talking with you again about this as we move through time. Professor Michael Klare, who is professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, the author of "Blood and Oil." Thank you for being with us.
KLARE: My pleasure.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Klare was one of several guests interviewed on the program. See the original article for the rest of the show (which was on topics other than oil).
-BA
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Original article available here.
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