Dec 08, 2005 -- STATE DEPARTMENT RELEASE/ContentWorks

The United States is promoting a more diversified and efficient use of energy resources in the Caribbean Basin because it is the most oil-dependent region in the world, says Matthew McManus, an expert on energy with the U.S. Department of State.

Speaking December 6 at the 29th Miami Conference on the Caribbean Basin, McManus, chief of the State Department's Energy Producers Country Affairs Division in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, said a key element for the United States to have an effective international energy policy must be to promote increased and diversified production of energy from foreign suppliers all over the world, as President Bush has outlined in his national energy strategy.

Energy diversification refers to promoting the use of hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles, residential solar energy systems, combined heat and power projects, and electricity produced from alternative and renewable sources such as wind, solar, biomass and landfill gas.

McManus said U.S. energy interests are "very much aligned" with energy consumers in the Caribbean. The United States, he said, has built up its own insurance policy for energy disruptions by increasing its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 700 million barrels of crude oil.

He added that increasing the U.S. Strategic Reserve served as a "bulwark" against the devastating hurricanes that struck the United States in 2005 and helped to stabilize the price of oil in both the United States and in the Central America/Caribbean region.

In particular, McManus cited the effects of Hurricane Katrina in August, which temporarily reduced U.S. production of oil coming from the Gulf of Mexico. That natural disaster, he said, shows "you never know" how or where "you're going to lose your energy supply."

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the world's largest stockpile of government-owned emergency crude oil. The reserve, established in the mid-1970s, provides the United States with a way to offset disruptions in commercial oil supplies that would threaten the national economy.

The recently enacted U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 directs the U.S. secretary of energy to fill the reserve to a capacity of 1 billion barrels of crude oil.

McManus said 93 percent of the electricity generated in Central America and the Caribbean derives from oil supplies. The consequence of this, he said, is that the region has a serious energy problem, and thus a "real need" to use its energy resources more efficiently.

The United States, he said, hopes that promoting diversification of energy resources in the Caribbean will help safeguard that region in the advent of disruptions of energy supplies in the global market. Diversification is especially crucial for the Caribbean Basin, he indicated, since that region lacks the same number of "buffers" against energy disruptions that the United States has.

In that regard, he said, the United States is using public diplomacy in the Caribbean and around the world to promote the importance of energy diversification.

McManus noted the promise of the Caribbean as a source of energy in his October 21, 2003, testimony before a U.S. congressional panel. In that testimony, McManus said natural gas finds in Trinidad and Tobago, for example, "have reinforced that country's position as a reliable supplier" of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the United States and global LNG markets. Trinidad and Tobago supplies about two-thirds of the U.S. LNG market, McManus told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on International Economic Policy, Export and Trade Promotion.

The president's energy policy, as outlined in a March White House fact sheet, calls for the United States to promote conservation and efficiency, increase domestic production, diversify the nation's energy supply and modernize the nation's energy infrastructure. (See fact sheet.)

These goals must be pursued while also upholding the U.S. responsibility to be "good stewards of the environment," said the White House.

For additional information on U.S. policy, see The Americas and Energy Policy.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)

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