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US begins to break foreign oil ‘addiction’
Carola Hoyos, Financial Times
The US is starting to break its “addiction” to foreign oil as high prices, more efficient cars, and the use of ethanol significantly cut the share of its oil imports for the first time since 1977.

The country’s foreign oil dependency is expected to fall from 60 per cent to 50 per cent in 2015, before rising again slightly to 54 per cent in 2030, according to the head of the Department of Energy’s statistical arm.

The country's foreign oil dependency is expected to fall from 60 per cent to 50 per cent in 2015, before rising again slightly to 54 per cent in 2030, according to the head of the Department of Energy's statistical arm.
(19 May 2008)
Also posted at ninemsn.

America must face the harsh realities over oil
Gerard Baker, UK TImes
... time is getting on and it is becoming ever more urgent that whoever wins in November drops the populist rhetoric and gets to grips with a couple of basic realities.

The first is that higher energy costs are here to stay. You don't have to buy Goldman Sachs's headline-grabbing forecast this month that crude will reach $200 a barrel.

But it would be foolish to try to deny that in the immediate future, anything we do now will not stop prices rising.

Oil is up by almost 30 per cent this year alone. That's not the fault of greedy energy companies, or that other current favourite, unscrupulous speculators. It is a simple fact of economic life in a world economy that is, in effect, experiencing a new industrial revolution among half its population.

Even in the event of a serious recession in much of the developed world, energy demand is not going to change much.

The second reality is that this is, in the end, at least in terms of the nexus of economics and energy policy, a Good Thing. It should force all of us in the West to redouble our efforts to diminish our dependence on oil. Fortunately, markets are quite effective at doing this. As we all know, the capitalist world - yes, even the US - is much more energy-efficient today than it was 40 years ago. For that we have the last great oil shock of the 1970s to thank.

A third reality is that, at least for the foreseeable future, these higher prices will have enormous implications for geopolitics.
(20 May 2008)

Robert Bryce interview (delusions of 'energy independence') (audio)
Counterpoint
It's a US Presidential election year and all the candidates are talking about energy independence. It's a national security issue and very much part of the US climate change debate. But US author Robert Bryce says such talk, for any country in the world, is based on a dangerous delusion

Robert Bryce has little time for the ideology of either the Neocons or the Greens and as for the politics and economics of ethanol, he argues that something is very rotten in the state of Iowa.

His book: Gusher of lies: the dangerous delusions of "energy independence"
(19 May 2008)
Michael Lardelli:
Interesting interview with Robert Bryce ("a liberal who got mugged by the laws of thermodynamics"). Normally Counterpoint tries too hard to be very right of centre and mocking of anything else but this interview was worthwhile.