By Daniel F. Becker
08-07-04
We Americans can't solve our oil dependency and high gas prices by building
more refineries. But we can by building cars that guzzle less gas.
The good news is that we have the technology -- efficient engines, smarter
transmissions and sleeker aerodynamics -- to cut in half the 8 mm bpd our
vehicles consume. The bad news is that the Bush administration has failed to
require automakers to take this technology off the shelf and put it in their
cars.
Today, more than half of America's refining capacity is controlled by five
big oil companies: ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Shell, BP and Valero. During the
1990s, the oil industry closed approximately 50 refineries for financial reasons
-- not for environmental reasons, as claimed by Vice President Cheney and the
oil industry.
The industry's effort to manipulate supply is not limited to closing refineries.
In 2001, the Federal Trade Commission found that oil companies deliberately
withheld gasoline supplies as a "profit-maximizing strategy" to drive
up prices.
The real reasons America is facing high gas prices are that increasing
numbers of gas-guzzling SUVs are driving up the demand, and a cartel controls
the oil supply. Since the only thing we can control is our demand, the Bush
administration's failure to reduce our oil consumption has put America over a
barrel.
We know what works. In 1975, Congress approved the Corporate Average Fuel
Economy (CAFE) standards. This doubled the fuel economy of cars, saving the US 3
mm bpd of oil. But the standards stopped rising in 1989, and automakers have
been going backward, as gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups replace more efficient
cars.
Technology has improved since 1989. If new vehicles took advantage of this
modern technology to average 40 miles per gallon of gasoline, we would save
nearly 4 mm bpd of oil. That's 1.5 mm barrels more oil than we import daily from
the entire Persian Gulf.
America's problem is not too few refineries, but too much demand. The answer to
high gas prices and our dangerous oil dependence is not more oil refineries, but
more refined vehicles that guzzle less gas.
Daniel F. Becker is director of the Sierra Club's global-warming program.
Source: USA Today