http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-gops-vision-north-americas-energy-future-should-scare-all-us?akid=12790.294211.RFCfAi&rd=1&src=newsletter1031810&t=10
Brace yourself. This combination of fossil fuel optimization and
North American solidarity against a potentially hostile world is
destined to become the core of the Republican economic and national
security platforms in the 2016 presidential election. It will similarly
govern action in Congress over the next two years. So, if you want to
understand the dynamics of contemporary American politics, it’s crucial
to grasp the new Republican vision of an energy-saturated North America.
Exxon’s Neo-Imperial Vision
Republican-style
North Americanism is, in fact, an amalgam of two intersecting urges.
The first of them involves a quest by U.S.-based giant oil companies to
gain greater access to the oil and natural gas reserves of Canada and
Mexico; the second, a drive by neoconservatives and national security
hawks in Washington to rev up
Cold War 2.0, while stepping up combat with both Iran and the Islamic State.
Let’s
start with the altered world energy order once dominated by privately
owned giants like BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil -- a.k.a. the
international oil companies, or IOCs. For most of the twentieth
century, these companies controlled a majority of the world’s oil and
gas reserves and so almost completely dominated the global trade in
hydrocarbons. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, many of their overseas
assets were systematically
appropriated
by governments in oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Algeria,
and Venezuela, and placed under the control of state-owned, national oil
companies, or NOCs. In response, the IOCs
sought to
increase their production from reserves in Canada and the U.S., as well
as in Mexico, which has its own state-owned oil company but was facing
declining output. This led those big companies to believe that, in the
long run, Mexico would be forced to open its doors to greater foreign
involvement.
Their strategy proved widely successful in the U.S.,
where the application of new technologies, including hydro-fracking,
horizontal drilling, and deepwater drilling, has led to spectacular
increases in oil and gas output. According to the Energy Information
Administration of the Department of Energy, U.S. field production of
crude oil
jumped
from five million barrels per day in 2008 to 8.6 million barrels in the
third quarter of 2014. Over the same period, the production of natural
gas similarly
rose from 21.1 to 25.7 trillion cubic feet. The current plunge in oil prices is
expected to slow the pace of U.S. drilling, but not prevent further gains.
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