Military leaders sound oil alarm
Group warns overreliance is threat to country
WASHINGTON — If you find your way to the website of the nonprofit Securing America’s Future Energy, you’ll come across this statement:
“Ninety-two percent of America’s transportation sector is monopolized by a single fuel. This exposes our country’s economic and national security to a volatile and easily manipulated global oil market. America must address its overwhelming reliance on oil.”
While this sounds like the position of a peak oil theorist or keep-it-in-the ground environmental group, the message comes from a coalition of retired four-star generals, other retired of-
ficers and corporate executives, who all warn that the country’s overwhelming dependence on oil threatens its economy and security. Headed by military leaders such as Gen. James Conway, the former commandant of the Marine Corps, SAFE is lobbying lawmakers to adopt policies to reduce oil demand — a goal that is anathema to the oil industry and its many allies in the Republican Congress and Trump administration.
Their thinking is rooted in decades of war in the Middle East and longstanding fears of a shock to the U.S. economy should oil prices spike again, Conway said in an interview. He cited the great cost of not only sending troops there to fight — more than 6,000 have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — but also defending the shipping lanes that oil tankers travel to supply world markets.
“Since the turn of the century, we have had as a primary focus on the Middle East,” he said. “And it’s because we want to create and ensure as much stability as we can there to make sure the oil continues to flow.”
The message from Conway and his band of military brass presents a potentially valuable ally, with some serious conservative bonafides, to a movement to shift the country away from oil that has largely been dominated by climate change groups and socalled Green politicians, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the former Democratic presidential candidate.
‘Middle ground player’
For now their influence remains relatively limited — Conway described his group as “a fledgling effort.” But the generals’ campaign to wean the U.S. economy from oil is nonetheless gaining traction among constituencies in Washington and could eventually add pressure on oil companies and refiners around Houston and across the country, already contending with low prices, slipping U.S. demand and increased competition from newer energy technologies.
“They’re a middle ground player who can talk to the auto companies and environmentalists and act as a broker within these different groups,” Frank Maisano, a partner at the energy lobbying firm Policy Resolution Group, said of the SAFE coalition. “They have pretty good street cred on what are hard issues in Washington right now.”
Front and center of their lobbying effort is persuading the government to take steps to open America’s roadways to automated, electric cars and naturalgas powered trucks — an issue about which the oil industry has largely stayed quiet, but poses a potential existential threat to its business. The gener-
“Since the turn of the century, we have had as a primary focus on the Middle East. And it’s because we want to create and ensure as much stability as we can there to make sure the oil continues to flow.” Gen. James Conway, former commandant of the Marine Corps
als also call for increasing domestic oil production to reduce dependence on the Middle East and maintaining Obama-era policies to increase the fuel efficiency of new cars to more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025 by advancing automated cars and other technologies.
Those policies are under review by the Trump administration.
The nonprofit, which took in more than $6 million in contributions in 2015, declined to provide a list of financial supporters, but said they included foundations, wealthy individuals and corporations such as Federal Express and Southwest Airlines, both of which have large exposures to the oil market.
Other backers include the Hewlett Foundation and Energy Foundation, charities backed by the founders of Hewlett Packard that support clean energy.
The common denominator, said Leslie Hayward, vice president of communications at SAFE, is “a vested interest in reducing the nation’s oil dependence.”
Mideast instability
Membership on SAFE’s board fits two categories: military figures such as Adm. Dennis Blair, former director of national intelligence, and Gen. P.X. Kelley, former commandant of the Marines, and executives of companies that have large fuel budgets, such as Fred Smith, the FedEx CEO, and David Steiner, the CEO of the Houston trash hauling company Waste Management.
But whether in Washington or the Houston boardrooms of some of the world’s largest oil companies, there is little disagreement that instability in the Middle East through the rise of terrorist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State group poses a risk to global energy markets and thus the U.S. economy.
Where groups diverge is on solutions, with groups like the American Petroleum Institute, which represents Exxon Mobil and the rest of the country’s largest oil companies, arguing salvation lies in increasing U.S. production through hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies that have opened up vast domestic oil and gas reserves.
Chris Tucker, senior managing director at FTI Consulting, whose clients include oil and gas companies, said that in some ways, the generals are fighting the last war, discounting the revival of a U.S. oil industry that has flooded global markets with crude.
SAFE “is one of those groups whose entire program and mission was built on the energy scarcity premise, that the U.S. was running out of oil and the folks in the Middle East were the only ones who have it,” Tucker said. “But obviously, that thesis has not aged particularly well over the past couple years.”
That sentiment is shared by many Republicans, for maintaining an oil and gas industry that has driven significant economic growth over the past decade remains a priority. Oil prices are below $50 a barrel, and net imports of foreign oil only represented 24 percent of U.S. consumption in 2015, the lowest level since 1970, according to the Department of Energy.
“I agree it’s a good idea to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” said James Dickey, chairman of the Texas Republican Party, “but why not use technologies that have made the capture of oil more efficient than ever and have identified more sources of oil in the United States than any time in our history?”
For now, the policies promoted by SAFE are gaining little traction within a Congress focused on health care and tax policy. And while Conway remains on good terms with the oil and gas industry — he has visited the Dallas oil investor Boone Pickens’ ranch on more than one occasion — the general concedes that could one day change.
Policy’s ‘minefields’
Still, Conway, who was a member of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s military advisory council in 2012, is not about to join a “keep it in the ground” rally anytime soon.
Appointed by former president George W. Bush to lead the U.S. Marine Corps as it waged war in Afghanistan, Conway might be best known among civilians for questioning the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding homosexuals in the ranks.
But during his tenure as Marine Commandant, he observed the logistical difficulties in keeping troops operating in remote corners of the world supplied with petroleum-based fuel and got to thinking about the country’s own strategic risks in relying on oil supplied by foreign powers.
“Conway is a very conservative Republican, but he’s one of those really smart guys who sees it all,” Burke said. “He was giving a speech at Navy Energy Day in 2009, and the Marine Corps gave him the numbers on how much fuel they use and said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ”
Conway retired from the military in 2010. Asked whether he would have advocated for reducing oil consumption while still leading the Marine Corps or serving on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he laughed.
“No, I think our leadership is reluctant to say what we’re doing is because of oil. There’s too many minefields,” he said. “If you’d had this conversation with me when I was active, I’d be using terms like ‘vital national interests.’ We wouldn’t be talking as explicitly.”