Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports

Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports

By Kevin G. Hall
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/13767738.htm
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's
dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent
by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said
Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters,
was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports
equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle
East in 2025.

But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's
where the greatest oil supplies are.

The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made
headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is
addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction."

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles
and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty
goal of replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the
Middle East by 2025."

He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our
dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from
anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a
freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms.
Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any
single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.

Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't
really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to
dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there
listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on
condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him
in trouble.

Presidential adviser Dan Bartlett made a similar point in a briefing
before the speech. "I think one of the biggest concerns the American
people have is oil coming from the Middle East. It is a very volatile
region," he said.

Through the first 11 months of 2005, the United States imported nearly
2.2 million barrels per day of oil from the Middle East nations of Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. That's less than 20 percent of the total U.S.
daily imports of 10.062 million barrels.

Imports account for about 60 percent of U.S. oil consumption.

Alan Hubbard, the director of the president's National Economic Council,
projects that America will import 6 million barrels of oil per day from
the Middle East in 2025 without major technological changes in energy
consumption.

The Bush administration believes that new technologies could reduce the
total daily U.S. oil demand by about 5.26 million barrels through
alternatives such as plug-in hybrids with rechargeable batteries,
hydrogen-powered cars and new ethanol products.

That means the new technologies could reduce America's oil appetite by
the equivalent of what we're expected to import from the Middle East by
2025, Hubbard said.

But we'll still be importing plenty of oil, according to the Energy
Department's latest projection.

"In 2025, net petroleum imports, including both crude oil and refined
products, are expected to account for 60 percent of demand ... up from
58 percent in 2004," according to the Energy Information
Administration's 2006 Annual Energy Outlook.

Some experts think Bush needs to do more to achieve his stated goal.

"We can achieve energy independence from the Middle East, but not with
what the president is proposing," said Craig Wolfe, the president of
Americans for Energy Independence in Studio City, Calif. "We need to
slow the growth in consumption. Our organization believes we need to do
something about conservation" and higher auto fuel-efficiency standards.