Mar 13, 2014 03:00 am | Daniel L. Davis, Jeremy Leggett
After
many weeks of political chaos and bloodshed in Kiev, Moscow sent
soldiers across the frontier into the Crimea on February 27, claiming it
aimed to protect the Russian-speaking population. Writing in the Washington Post
on March 7, former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice captured the
essence of many in the US who advocate using oil as a weapon against
Russia. She wrote that “soon, North America’s bounty of oil and gas will
swamp Moscow’s capacity. Authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline and
championing natural gas exports would signal that we intend to do
precisely that.” Secretary Rice’s assumptions regarding the state of US
tight oil and gas as “bountiful” are common among many opinion leaders
in the West. They also happen to be wrong.Before contemplating the use of US oil and gas as a strategic weapon, it might be useful to review a few key fundamentals. First, consider the following oil production, consumption and import/export numbers reported by British Petroleum for 2012. Russia produced 10.6 million barrels per day (mbd), consumed 3.2 mbd, leaving 7.4 mbd available for export. The United States produced 8.9 mbd, consumed 18.5 mbd, and imported 10.5 mbd.
read morehttp://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-oil-gas-weapon-wont-work-10041
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