Oil addiction not just an American nightmare

RISING oil prices and an expanding global economy have put added pressure on the search for oil and gas across the globe.

In his state of the union address, US President George W Bush accepted Americans were addicted to oil and pledged to cut dependence on the black gold from the Middle East by 75% over the next 20 years. As if that will change anything other than the source of supply.

Currently, the US is guzzling its way through a massive portion of the globe’s natural resources and doing very little to curb its dependence on oil and gas.

It consumes 25% of daily oil and gas output and shows no sign of easing back.

How much consolation the world can take from this week’s address is a matter of opinion.

Along the way he also mentioned clean coal technology, renewable energy and nuclear power as alternatives.

With transport accounting for a huge part of the country’s daily consumption, Mr Bush also promised greater research into producing batteries for hybrid cars.

All of what he has touched on makes sense. What action is taken is another matter.

Indications from the US car industry suggest he may have little scope to impose greater restrictions on the US motor giants to produce more efficient vehicles.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are facing serious difficulties and have shed tens of thousands of jobs.

So no major changes in US car efficiency in the near term seems a reasonable assumption.

About one million people are employed by the sector with obvious implications.

US author Kurt Vonnegut Jr wrote an article pointing out that the whole world in fact was addicted to oil.

Vonnegut said his first car gave him a high that beat all highs. He wrote: “As I recall, (the car) was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drug of all: fossil fuels.”

“Here’s what I think the truth is: we are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.”

That addiction is what’s driving us to war and if we cured it the world would be safer and healthier and less compromised.

It is addiction that is driving leaders to “committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on”, he concluded.

That’s a pretty grim scenario, but it has a ring of truth and echoes the views of many international experts who were deeply sceptical of the US war on Iraq.

I suppose we should be thankful for any glimmer of hope from the US in relation to oil and gas.

This issue has implications for us all.

Just yesterday, the German inflation figure held at 2.1% for the 12 months to the end of January 2006.

The authorities said the unchanged figure was “once again attributable - as it has been for nearly two years - to above-average increases in oil prices”.

Excluding heating oil and fuels, consumer prices in Germany would have risen by just 1.3% year-on-year, they said.

For two years, in other words, the rapidly changing oil scenario has cast a cloud across the biggest economy in Europe.

It’s difficult, given the current state of the market, to see how this situation will change anytime soon.

And the need to break our addiction is indeed becoming increasingly vital as the consequences for the globe become graver.

In that context the stand- off between Shell and the people of Mayo over the Corrib Gas pipeline is just a microcosm of what’s happening globally.

As Vonnegut said, we are all complicit in this, because as consumers we all want cheap gas and electricity to run our homes and we want cheap petrol for our cars.

Gas is currently about 50 pence a therm in Britain and the implications of that for us is another 25% hike in fuel prices next year.

On a much more prosaic level it is becoming increasingly clear that the grip the State companies have on the electricity and gas markets here needs to be tackled head on.

Otherwise the ordinary consumer is looking at increasingly expensive domestic fuel and petrol bills. In the long-term, unless we switch to nuclear fuel or alternative sources the cold turkey scenario outlined by Vonnegut will hurtle down the road.