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Oil Dependence Good

UQ

US oil imports from the Middle East are high

However, recent oil import trends from the Gulf region suggest why the US might continue to play a critical security role in the region. While domestic production increased the most in 150 years last year, Washington will confirm later this week that oil imports from the Gulf region continued to rise. By the end of November the US had already imported more than 450m barrels of crude from Saudi Arabia, more than it imported from Riyadh in the whole of 2009, 2010 or 2011, according to figures from the US energy department. For the first time since 2003, Saudi imports accounted for more than 15 per cent of total US oil imports. The Gulf as a whole accounted for more than 25 per cent, a nine-year high. Other Gulf exporters are also seeing unusually strong US demand. By the end of November, Kuwait had shipped more oil to the US than in any year since 1998. Analysts are expecting annual figures to be released later this week to confirm the trend seen up to November.

America relies on oil from the Middle East

Cavell 4/11/12 (Collin S. Cavell, Assistant Professor of Political Science Chair, “AMERICA’S DEPENDENCY ON MIDDLE EAST OIL”, http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-s-dependency-on-middle-east-oil/30177 )

North America is the largest consumer of oil regionally, followed by Asia (primarily Japan), Europe, and then other world regions. Importing over 13.5 million barrels of oil per day, the U.S. is easily the world’s largest oil importer, accounting for over 63% of total U.S. daily consumption. “Oil from the Middle East (specifically, the Persian Gulf) accounts for 17 percent of U.S. oil imports, and this dependence is growing,” wrote Heritage Foundation researcher Ariel Cohen in April of 2006.

Link

**If they don’t read the algae biofuels advantage, this turn doesn’t apply. If they do, but don’t read scenario 2, here’s the link.

Algae biofuels solve fuel demand- trades off with other resources like oil

Enderle 2013 (Timo Enderle, Biotech Consultancy and a Life Science Marketing Agency.)(“Sea Water Could Hold Key to Fuel Demands,” Algae Observer, University of Aberdeen, 2/5/13, http://www.algaeobserver.com/sea-water-key-to-fuel-demands//PL)

The answer to society’s fuel demands could literally be all around us according to Aberdeen scientists – in fact it makes up two thirds of the planet’s surface. An international research team led by the University of Aberdeen is hoping to make biofuels out of microscopic algae found in the world’s oceans and seas. Currently biofuels are created from crops and land-based vegetation – something project coordinator Dr. Oliver Ebenhoeh, from the University of Aberdeen’s Institute of Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology, says is not sustainable. He said: “We need to find efficient ways of supplying our energy demand in a way that doesn’t compete for valuable resources like arable land or fresh water. “We can’t just put corn in your car’s gas tank because it’s being used to feed millions already – it won’t be sustainable. This is one of the key motivations to look into marine microalgae. “Cultivating algae using water that can’t be used for irrigation, like salt water or brackish water, makes sense because it’s so vast – it’s all around us and there’s no competition to use the land to grow other things.” The AccliPhot project is due to run for four years and is backed by €4million of EU funding and involves 12 partners from across the continent. Today First Minister Alex Salmond praised the initiative. He said: “Scotland is leading the way in the energy sector, with our world class oil and gas industry now allied to a vibrant renewables sector that is harnessing the power of our boundless wind and water resources to bring jobs and investment to our country and ensure we can power our nation on a sustainable basis. “The AccliPhot project could herald another exciting development in Scotland’s energy story with the team at the University of Aberdeen using cutting-edge techniques to support the development of a sustainable biofuel from microscopic algae. “In many ways, these researchers are ideally placed to undertake this work, being based in a city that has a magnificent heritage in the offshore industry. I would like to extend my best wishes to the team for this exciting project and I look forward to hearing the results.” The team will try to understand more fully how plants and microalgae respond to changes in light and other conditions and use that information to make new products. Whilst the main focus is on biofuels the study could also yield breakthroughs in antibiotics, nutritional supplements or even produce chemical compounds used in the cosmetics industry. Dr Ebenhoeh added: “We’re hoping to understand the principles that guide these changes to environments and then see if this can be scaled up to industry scale. If that is successful then the applications are enormous because then you can really look into targeted pharmaceuticals or precursors for the chemical industry.” Micro algae eat nothing but carbon dioxide, light and some minerals. Cells of microalgae typically measure between a few to several hundred micrometers across and can be grown in vast numbers in giant 10,000 litre water tanks called photo-bioreactors. So if they can be successfully cultivated to make biofuels they could contribute hugely to the planet’s energy consumption

Algal biofuels trade off imported oil

White 2011 (Frances White, biological anthropologist, professor, and primatologist at the University of Oregon, “Study: Algae could replace 17% of U.S. oil imports”, http://www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=859 )

RICHLAND, Wash. – High oil prices and environmental and economic security concerns have triggered interest in using algae-derived oils as an alternative to fossil fuels. But growing algae — or any other biofuel source — can require a lot of water. However, a new study shows that being smart about where we grow algae can drastically reduce how much water is needed for algal biofuel. Growing algae for biofuel, while being water-wise, could also help meet congressionally mandated renewable fuel targets by replacing 17 percent of the nation's imported oil for transportation, according to a paper published in the journal Water Resources Research.

Asian Economy

Oil independence wrecks Asian economies and exacerbates oil conflicts with China- turns case

Thompson 2012 (Loren Thompson, contributor to Forbes magazine, 12/3/12, “What Happens When America No Longer Needs Middle East Oil?”, http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/12/03/what-happens-when-america-no-longer-needs-middle-east-oil/ )

The second category of losers would be the economies of East Asia, which the International Energy Agency says will be the main consumers of Persian Gulf oil in the years ahead. China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are heavily dependent on the flow of oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz, and yet do little to assure that flow is not disrupted by local tensions. If America pulls out of the Gulf, the nations of East Asia will either have to play a bigger military role in the Middle East, or find other sources of oil. America might have sufficient new-found reserves of fossil fuel to supply Japan and South Korea in an emergency, but concern about access to Persian Gulf oil would undoubtedly exacerbate tensions over who owns contested oil reserves in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

Heg

Oil independence leads to a US withdrawal from the Middle East- U.S. influence in the region would diminish

Thompson 2012 (Loren Thompson, contributor to Forbes magazine, 12/3/12, “What Happens When America No Longer Needs Middle East Oil?”, http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/12/03/what-happens-when-america-no-longer-needs-middle-east-oil/ )

That’s good news for America, however it could have ramifications that are not good for the rest of the world. If the United States no longer needs access to Middle East oil under any foreseeable circumstances, then the priority Washington assigns to the region will plummet. Many analysts believe that a unified global pricing structure for fossil fuels will keep America engaged, but with U.S. spot prices for natural gas currently running at a fraction of what the fuel costs in Europe and East Asia, it appears global pricing isn’t so integrated after all.¶ Even if it were, Washington’s options for insulating U.S. energy markets from global price swings are multiplying as domestic production grows. If you know the history of global oil in the years before World War Two, then you realize there is nothing new about America enjoying energy independence as Asia worries about its own needs. What definitely is new, though, is that in the near future there might be no western nation capable of or willing to police the Persian Gulf.¶ Britain carried that burden from the late 1700s until World War Two, but its circumstances were so diminished in the war’s aftermath that it soon exited all of its military bases “East of Suez.” As Britain receded in the Middle East, America’s role there grew — especially after successive energy crises engineered by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries alerted Washington to its growing dependence on foreign oil. So the Pentagon became accustomed to assuring the security of oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz, maintaining a continuous naval presence in and around the Gulf while periodically deploying ground forces to protect fragile oil-producing states.¶ Nothing lasts forever, though, and now a combination of energy independence and economic necessity may lead Washington to become more insular in its outlook, the same way London did after the war. With less need for foreign oil and an increasingly urgent requirement to rein in federal borrowing, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where the political system will be inclined to cut spending. It will be in distant places that have ceased having an impact on how elections turn out.¶With the prospect of OPEC-induced energy shortages off the table, at least in America, political leaders are sure to begin asking why the U.S. Navy is carrying the burden of making sure China has secure sources of oil. The answers they get from Pentagon strategists aren’t likely to be well received in a nation where economic growth has slowed to a crawl due in no small part to Chinese mercantilism.¶ So there’s a real possibility that Washington will go through the same East-of-Suez debate that London did in the 1960s. The Obama Administration’s new Asia-Pacific military posture may be the first, tentative sign that America is losing its enthusiasm for securing Middle East oil supplies. Of course, everyone in the administration will vigorously reject any such interpretation. But just for fun, let’s ask the question of who wins and who loses if America decides it’s had enough of being the policeman on the beat in the Persian Gulf.¶ The biggest losers would be the Arab oil states grouped in the Gulf Cooperation Council, most of which are monarchies kept in power by a combination oil dollars and American military power. Despite their oil revenues, none of these countries except Saudi Arabia has the wherewithal to defend itself against military pressure from Iran if America leaves the stage – or for that matter from Iraq, which has repeatedly laid claim to oil fields in Kuwait and other nearby states. The vacuum created by an American departure would force nations like Bahrain and Qatar to seek new military protectors, either by submitting to the influence of bigger regional powers or by reaching out to China.

Hegemony solves great power wars- retrenchment intensifies Middle East conflicts

Ikenberry et. al, 13 – John Ikenberry, Ph. D in Political Science from Chicago, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, Co-Director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies; William Wohlforth, Ph. D in Political Science from Yale, Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College; Stephen Brooks, Ph. D in Political Science from Yale, Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University; “Don’t Come Home, America: The Case Against Retrenchment”, http://live.belfercenter.org/files/IS3703_Brooks%20Wohlforth%20Ikenberry.pdf

Assessing the Security Benefits of Deep Engagement Even if deep engagement’s costs are far less than retrenchment advocates claim, they are not worth bearing unless they yield greater benefits. We focus here on the strategy’s major security benefits; in the next section, we take up the wider payoffs of the United States’ security role for its interests in other realms, notably the global economy—an interaction relatively unexplored by international relations scholars. A core premise of deep engagement is that it prevents the emergence of a far more dangerous global security environment. For one thing, as noted above, the United States’ overseas presence gives it the leverage to restrain partners from taking provocative action. Perhaps more important, its core alliance commitments also deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and make its partners more secure, reducing their incentive to adopt solutions to their security problems that threaten others and thus stoke security dilemmas. The contention that engaged U.S. power dampens the baleful effects of anarchy is consistent with influential variants of realist theory. Indeed, arguably the scariest portrayal of the war-prone world that would emerge absent the “American Pacifier” is provided in the works of John Mearsheimer, who forecasts dangerous multipolar regions replete with security competition, arms races, nuclear proliferation and associated preventive war temptations, regional rivalries, and even runs at regional hegemony and full-scale great power war. 72 How do retrenchment advocates, the bulk of whom are realists, discount this benefit? Their arguments are complicated, but two capture most of the variation: (1) U.S. security guarantees are not necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries and conflict in Eurasia; or (2) prevention of rivalry and conflict in Eurasia is not a U.S. interest. Each response is connected to a different theory or set of theories, which makes sense given that the whole debate hinges on a complex future counterfactual (what would happen to Eurasia’s security setting if the United States truly disengaged?). Although a certain answer is impossible, each of these responses is nonetheless a weaker argument for retrenchment than advocates acknowledge. The first response flows from defensive realism as well as other international relations theories that discount the conflict-generating potential of anarchy under contemporary conditions. 73 Defensive realists maintain that the high ex pected costs of territorial conquest, defense dominance, and an array of policies and practices that can be used credibly to signal benign intent, mean that Eurasia’s major states could manage regional multipolarity peacefully without the American pacifier. Retrenchment would be a bet on this scholarship, particularly in regions where the kinds of stabilizers that nonrealist theories point to—such as democratic governance or dense institutional linkages—are either absent or weakly present. There are three other major bodies of scholarship, however, that might give decisionmakers pause before making this bet. First is regional expertise. Needless to say, there is no consensus on the net security effects of U.S. withdrawal. Regarding each region, there are optimists and pessimists. Few experts expect a return of intense great power competition in a post-American Europe, but many doubt European governments will pay the political costs of increased EU defense cooperation and the budgetary costs of increasing military outlays. 74 The result might be a Europe that is incapable of securing itself from various threats that could be destabilizing within the region and beyond (e.g., a regional conflict akin to the 1990s Balkan wars), lacks capacity for global security missions in which U.S. leaders might want European participation, and is vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers. What about the other parts of Eurasia where the United States has a substantial military presence? Regarding the Middle East, the balance begins to swing toward pessimists concerned that states currently backed by Washington— notably Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—might take actions upon U.S. retrenchment that would intensify security dilemmas. And concerning East Asia, pessimism regarding the region’s prospects without the American pacifier is pronounced. Arguably the principal concern expressed by area experts is that Japan and South Korea are likely to obtain a nuclear capacity and increase their military commitments, which could stoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It is notable that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan moved to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity and were only constrained from doing so by a still-engaged United States. 75 The second body of scholarship casting doubt on the bet on defensive realism’s sanguine portrayal is all of the research that undermines its conception of state preferences. Defensive realism’s optimism about what would happen if the United States retrenched is very much dependent on its particular—and highly restrictive—assumption about state preferences; once we relax this assumption, then much of its basis for optimism vanishes. Specifically, the prediction of post-American tranquility throughout Eurasia rests on the assumption that security is the only relevant state preference, with security defined narrowly in terms of protection from violent external attacks on the homeland. Under that assumption, the security problem is largely solved as soon as offense and defense are clearly distinguishable, and offense is extremely expensive relative to defense. Burgeoning research across the social and other sciences, however, undermines that core assumption: states have preferences not only for security but also for prestige, status, and other aims, and they engage in trade-offs among the various objectives. 76 In addition, they define security not just in terms of territorial protection but in view of many and varied milieu goals. It follows that even states that are relatively secure may nevertheless engage in highly competitive behavior. Empirical studies show that this is indeed sometimes the case. 77 In sum, a bet on a benign postretrenchment Eurasia is a bet that leaders of major countries will never allow these nonsecurity preferences to influence their strategic choices. To the degree that these bodies of scholarly knowledge have predictive leverage, U.S. retrenchment would result in a significant deterioration in the security environment in at least some of the world’s key regions. We have already mentioned the third, even more alarming body of scholarship. Offensive realism predicts that the withdrawal of the American pacifier will yield either a competitive regional multipolarity complete with associated insecurity, arms racing, crisis instability, nuclear proliferation, and the like, or bids for regional hegemony, which may be beyond the capacity of local great powers to contain (and which in any case would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly including regional great power war).

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