Rise in Saudi Oil Imports Exposes the Lie of North American Oil Independence

Oil Change International
For some time now we have been told that the ongoing North American oil boom will end U.S. reliance on Middle Eastern oil and change America’s foreign policy dynamic with regards to ‘hostile’ oil producers. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The latest petroleum statistics from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that in the past year, while U.S. oil production surged at unprecedented rates, imports from Saudi Arabia, (you know, that country that we’re supposed to be less dependent on) have in fact risen.
And the fact that this has happened while overall imports have declined only serves to further demonstrate what a load of nonsense the oil independence rhetoric really is.
Yes, America’s importing less oil but is it any less dependent on what goes on in the Middle East? Not a bit.
This is what’s been going on.
Saudi Arabia has been increasing supply throughout 2012 hitting record levels of 10.1 million barrels per day in May. This is part of the country’s commitment to ease the effect on global oil markets of sanctions against its arch enemy, Iran. It has been the country’s stated intention to bring prices down towards $100 a barrel. This seems to have worked as on June 1 Brent crude dropped below $100 for the first time since Feb. 2011, although the ongoing economic crisis in the Eurozone clearly also plays a role.
Part of the Saudi import rise is also attributed to the (at that time) imminent opening of Motiva’s massive refinery expansion at Port Arthur, Texas. Motiva is a joint venture between Shell and Saudi Aramco, the Saudi national oil company. The expansion raises the refinery’s capacity to 600,000 b/d making it the biggest in America. The official opening was May 31. Naturally, Saudi Aramco wants to process some Saudi oil at its flagship foreign refinery.
But according to the EIA, other refineries have been soaking up the extra Saudi supply as well. Naturally, the same companies who tell us that one of the great virtues of increased North American supply is reduced dependence on Middle East oil show little loyalty to North American suppliers when they are offered a cheap tanker load or two. And why should they? Business is business, after all.
All of this makes for some sober reading for the champions of so called North American oil independence. Because while U.S. production climbed in this period a hefty 600,000 b/d, reaching levels not seen since 1998, the unattainable goal of ‘independence’ from the Saudi bogeyman became less, well, attainable.
Saudi Arabia remains the most powerful force in the global oil market and booming North American production has done nothing to change that. North American oil producers will never maintain spare capacity that can be used to address supply disruptions (unless we nationalize them, now there’s a thought) and Saudi Arabia has shown that it has the ability to both maintain a supply cushion and increase its capacity in a relatively short time.
Further, Saudi Arabia owns a 50 percent share in nearly 1 million b/d of refining capacity in the U.S. Unless that changes there will always be imports from Saudi Arabia even if North American oil independence ever did become a reality, which is unlikely.
While America remains the consumer of some 20 percent of the world’s oil, it doesn’t matter how much oil is produced in America, Canada or any other ‘friendly’ country .This country will always remain vulnerable to the volatile oil market. It will therefore always maintain an interest in securing oil supply corridors in the Middle East and elsewhere.
And while America continues to consume that 20 percent of global oil production, it will also continue to fail to play its role in heading off a climate disaster. Meeting that demand today means digging ever deeper and dirtier for oil, using more energy to get at those barrels and relentlessly expanding the global pool of carbon available to burn. The current North American oil boom is entirely founded on extraction that is more energy intensive and more polluting. It is tar sands, fracked oil, ultra deepwater, the Arctic, and if the industry gets its way, the oil shale (kerogen) in the Rocky Mountains could take the prize for extreme and destructive production.
So we need to take this moment to step back and think about what we are being sold. A fantasy of energy independence that even if it were attainable would come at a terrific cost in pollution, community disruption and climate change.
The only way to beat Saudi Arabia—if that really were one of the goals of the relentless push into extreme oil—is to cut demand. It is clearly possible to cut U.S. demand for oil around 50 percent in the next 20 years, and that would surely make a bigger impact on our energy independence than any feasible increase in supply ever could.
But freedom from the Saudi influence on the global oil market is not the goal. Profit is. And because of the enormous profits at stake and the corrupt and dysfunctional system of campaign finance in America, it is not yet politically feasible to make those oil demand cuts.
As the millions pouring into the political process from the oil industry makes only too clear.
Visit EcoWatch's ENERGY page for more related news on this topic.
The growing Texas solar industry is offering a safe harbor to unemployed oil and gas professionals amidst the latest oil and gas industry bust, this one brought on by the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Houston Chronicle reports.
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
This month, a new era began in the fight against plastic pollution.
- Historic Agreement on Plastic Pollution Reached by 180+ Countries ... ›
- U.S. Leads the World in Plastic Waste, New Study Finds - EcoWatch ›
- EU Bans Exporting Unsorted Plastic Waste to Poorer Countries ... ›
Trending
Sweden's reindeer have a problem. In winter, they feed on lichens buried beneath the snow. But the climate crisis is making this difficult. Warmer temperatures mean moisture sometimes falls as rain instead of snow. When the air refreezes, a layer of ice forms between the reindeer and their meal, forcing them to wander further in search of ideal conditions. And sometimes, this means crossing busy roads.
- San Antonio, Texas Unveils Largest Highway Crossing for Wildlife in ... ›
- Wildlife Crossings a Huge Success - EcoWatch ›
Heatwaves are not just distinct to the land. A recent study found lakes are susceptible to temperature rise too, causing "lake heatwaves," The Independent reported.
- Climate Change Will Be Sudden and Cataclysmic Unless We Act Now ›
- There's a Heatwave at the Arctic 'Doomsday Vault' - EcoWatch ›
- Marine Heatwaves Destroy Ocean Ecosystems Like Wildfires ... ›
By Aaron W Hunter
A chance discovery of a beautifully preserved fossil in the desert landscape of Morocco has solved one of the great mysteries of biology and paleontology: how starfish evolved their arms.
The Pompeii of palaeontology. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<h2></h2><p>Although starfish might appear very robust animals, they are typically made up of lots of hard parts attached by ligaments and soft tissue which, upon death, quickly degrade. This means we rely on places like the Fezouata formations to provide snapshots of their evolution.</p><p>The starfish fossil record is patchy, especially at the critical time when many of these animal groups first appeared. Sorting out how each of the various types of ancient starfish relate to each other is like putting a puzzle together when many of the parts are missing.</p><h2>The Oldest Starfish</h2><p><em><a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/216101v1.full.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cantabrigiaster</a></em> is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. It was discovered in 2003, but it has taken over 17 years to work out its true significance.</p><p>What makes <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> unique is that it lacks almost all the characteristics we find in brittle stars and starfish.</p><p>Starfish and brittle stars belong to the family Asterozoa. Their ancestors, the Somasteroids were especially fragile - before <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> we only had a handful of specimens. The celebrated Moroccan paleontologist Mohamed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.06.041" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ben Moula</a> and his local team was instrumental in discovering <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018216302334?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">these amazing fossils</a> near the town of Zagora, in Morocco.</p><h2>The Breakthrough</h2><p>Our breakthrough moment came when I compared the arms of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> with those of modern sea lilles, filter feeders with long feathery arms that tend to be attached to the sea floor by a stem or stalk.</p><p>The striking similarity between these modern filter feeders and the ancient starfish led our team from the University of Cambridge and Harvard University to create a new analysis. We applied a biological model to the features of all the current early Asterozoa fossils in existence, along with a sample of their closest relatives.</p>Cantabrigiaster is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<p>Our results demonstrate <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> is the most primitive of all the Asterozoa, and most likely evolved from ancient animals called crinoids that lived 250 million years before dinosaurs. The five arms of starfish are a relic left over from these ancestors. In the case of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em>, and its starfish descendants, it evolved by flipping upside-down so its arms are face down on the sediment to feed.</p><p>Although we sampled a relatively small numbers of those ancestors, one of the unexpected outcomes was it provided an idea of how they could be related to each other. Paleontologists studying echinoderms are often lost in detail as all the different groups are so radically different from each other, so it is hard to tell which evolved first.</p>