Saturday June 24, 2006

Oil depletion and the US Army (interview transcript)

peakoil.com -> globalpublicmedia.com :

GPM correspondent David Room: What role does energy play in resolving conflicts?

Don Fournier, co-author of the report Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations (pdf): Well, any military, I think, goes to war based on it's - you know, it has to have a supply of energy to function ... although the Army doesn't use a great deal of energy compared to the other services, say the Navy and the Air Force, it's certainly an important part of what they do if they have to deploy. When you look at what we call the tooth-to-tail ratio - the tooth being say a division - a heavy division moves out, that's about 90,000 tons of hardware, the equipment, the combat vehicles, - there's about 35,000 tons. But behind that is what we call the tail, and that's another 100,000 tons and about 40% of that is petroleum and oil lubricants ... so it is certainly an issue when you talk about deploying your army in the field ...

DR: And does the Army have its own strategic reserve of transportation fuels?

DF: Not that I'm aware of. The Army gets its fuels from the Defense Fuels Supply Center, which gets the fuels for the entire Department of Defense. And they have what repository would be with them, and they do have an amount of storage at various installations around the world, but we sort of look to the general outside economy for the fuel sources. They're bought on the market.

DR: And do you see any need to significantly change our transportation system?

DF: Very definitely. Oil is not sustainable; how can you describe it any more than that? ... oil is 40% of our energy and 90% of our transportation system ... the technology is there; you can get readily get cars that get forty, fifty miles per gallon rather than ones that get fifteen or ten or whatever miles per gallon ... there are things that we can do on a larger scale within our cities, within our urban planning, and within our infrastructure that we use in our cities ... we've somehow incentivized people to be very energy-wasteful, very profligate. Even at today's prices. If you could just reduce demand five percent or so, you'd see a great reduction in prices and a great ease of the situation.

DR: What are the consequences for the nation and as well for the Army of doing nothing?

DF: For the Army I don't think it will matter much. It'll be higher costs to operate the Army. The military would probably get priority for what energy is out there, so it really wouldn't hurt the Army in that great a sense. But as a nation as a whole, I think doing nothing is a pretty short-sighted path to follow ... people say that energy is a small piece of our economy so we're not as sensitive to those things as we were back in the 70s and those times, but that's simply because we've moved our industry offshore. We're less energy-intensive that way, but we certainly need energy to operate this nation ... I think the consequence of doing nothing is real problematical. And it worries me that, what's our most readily source of energy available in the United States? Well that's coal. So are we going to go back to everybody having a coal bin in their basement and burning that? Then you're really starting to produce more carbon dioxide, more emissions that are hazardous to the environment, so I see a very problematical future coming from not doing anything.

(2006-06-24 16:58:46 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

Most popular blog postings on lowem.log :

1. Singapore SIBOR interest rates fall to 1.5%, lowest since Dec 2004
2. Singapore SIBOR rate falls to 1.31%, lowest since Nov 2004
3. Live spot gold price quotes chart on COMEX
4. Fuel prices seen stoking Malaysia inflation in 2008
5. 2010 Honda Civic Hybrid preliminary specifications released
6. Singapore SIBOR rate fell to 1.25% in Apr 2008, lowest since Aug 2004
7. Malaysia inflation rate jumps to 7.7% in Jun 2008, a 26-year record high
8. Singapore : electricity tariffs to increase April 2008 on rising oil prices

Featured articles on lowem.log :

1. ABC Guide to Beating Inflation in Singapore and Elsewhere
2. Singapore inflation rate hits new 26-year high of 7.5% in Apr 2008
3. Singapore : Bread price inflation continues
4. 2010 Honda Civic Hybrid preliminary specifications released
5. Peakoiler buys 2008 Honda Civic Hybrid FD3
6. How to insert currency exchange rates into Google Spreadsheets
7. Singapore SIBOR rate falls to 0.94% in Nov 2008, lowest since Jul 2004
8. Singapore : Inflation erodes away bank savings