U.S. holds itself
hostage to oil interests

The nation should greatly
increase the development and
use of other fuel sources

The surge in the price of gasoline and the terrorist activities in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Middle East may be dire precursors of even worse things to come. One of the United States' major sources of oil imports is Saudi Arabia, which alone sits on about a quarter of the world's proven oil reserves.

About the author: Neil Bates is a nuclear engineer who has worked for the nuclear industry for more than 20 years and currently works at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.

Ever since its immense reserves were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi Arabia has pumped the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs and a relatively stable price, becoming the mainstay of the global energy market. But while there may be no shortage of oil in Saudi Arabia, there is no shortage of things that can go seriously wrong -- interrupting the oil supply and jeopardizing the world economy.

With every bombing in the Middle East, the prospects for keeping Saudi oil flowing adequately seem more uncertain. Although there are positive signs that the Saudi government sides with the U.S. coalition in the war on terror and is taking measures to overcome security concerns, the sabotage of oil-production facilities or disabling of an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf would shake the world oil market and send gasoline prices soaring.

But consider a very real possibility: As global demand for oil rises and Persian Gulf oil becomes even more vital, Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia take power and halt all oil exports. If the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s caused the global price of oil to quadruple, imagine what will happen to prices if Saudi oil stops pumping.

But even if such scary scenarios seem unrealistic, the threat of oil disruptions or massive price increases is genuine. America's solution is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has about 600 million barrels. That sounds like a major safety net, but the world consumes 2 billion barrels of oil every day. Our strategic reserve would supply the United States for only about a month, if we had no other supplies. The uncertainties associated with unpredictable oil supply from the Persian Gulf region are huge, and one month's reserve is little cushion against an economic disaster.

Precisely because the hazards are so acute and unpredictable, we need to make it harder for our enemies to use oil as a weapon and to take steps to protect ourselves if it is used.

A major overhaul of U.S. energy policy is long overdue -- one that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil by taking stronger conservation measures and expanding the use of domestic energy sources. Gasoline accounts for about 45 percent of our oil consumption. Most of the rest is used by industry. Electricity produced from clean-coal technologies and new nuclear power plants could replace the direct burning of oil in many industrial processes and even in transportation, by powering electric rail and mass transit systems.

More important, over the next two decades it could help us transition to a new fleet of automobiles and trucks that run on hydrogen fuel cells rather than gasoline, with the hydrogen generated by clean electric power plants.

Astonishingly, Congress still hasn't even passed an energy bill that would provide funds for coal research and development projects and tax incentives for the construction of advanced nuclear power plants that would make this solution possible. Nor has it raised the fuel-efficiency standards of the automobile fleet or even required standards for SUVs and light trucks, though a bill to raise the current average for automobiles of 24 miles per gallon to 36 miles per gallon by 2015 would have saved almost 22 percent of the nine million barrels of gasoline U.S. drivers burn up in a day.

One of our most pressing long-term priorities must be to develop hydrogen as a fuel to replace gasoline. That means developing the new electric power generation needed to produce it, and creating a nationwide infrastructure of "filling stations" that support fuel-cell vehicles. The longer we delay, the more we keep ourselves hostage to a few very unpredictable oil-exporting countries.

The delays mean that U.S. dependence on foreign oil -- which reached 65 percent of consumption earlier this year -- will continue to rise, threatening our nation's energy security and raising new questions about our ability to act in our own self-interest.

It is also why preparations for the switch to a renewable hydrogen economy need to begin right now.