Business | Oil & Gas
US will need Mideast oil for years - Saudi envoy
On the eve of US President George Bush's address to the Congress which was expected to tout the need for more US energy independence, Saudi Arabia's US ambassador on Monday said the world's biggest oil user will rely on Middle East crude oil "for many years to come".
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 January 24, 2007
Washington: On the eve of US President George Bush's address to the Congress which was expected to tout the need for more US energy independence, Saudi Arabia's US ambassador on Monday said the world's biggest oil user will rely on Middle East crude oil "for many years to come".
Bush's annual State of the Union address late yesterday was expected to touch on key energy policy points after Bush made the surprise pronouncement in last year's address that the US is addicted to crude oil, including supplies imported from the Middle East.
However, US policymakers should be talking about interdependence with Middle East suppliers, not independence, said Prince Turki Al Faisal, the kingdom's US ambassador, speaking at George Washington University.
"I think we should be talking not about being independent of Middle East oil for the United States but rather being interdependent with the Middle East for energy sources," Al Faisal said.
The United States and other nations "will remain in need of the resources of our part of the world in the energy sector for many years to come and that is something that your people should realise," he said.
Investment in home-grown US energy sources benefits both US consumers and the global energy market as a whole, Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said.
"Any time we are able to provide more fuel to our energy mix - whether through expanded domestic production or increased use of ethanol - we loosen the grip that foreign countries have on our energy supply."
A rising focus on "energy security" by both the Bush administration and Cong-ress has added momentum to efforts to employ home-grown fuel sources like ethanol to reduce US dependency on oil imports. US imports about 60 per cent of its oil requirement.
Following that theme, Bush is likely to call for more US usage of home-grown supplies of ethanol, sources said.
One source briefed by White House officials said Bush's speech could call for over 60 billion gallons (227 billion litres) a year of ethanol to be mixed into US gasoline supplies by 2030 - or about 30 per cent of current US gasoline consumption.
Energy Department officials say a conservative limit of ethanol from corn is about 13 billion gallons. But the Bush administration wants to make ethanol production from cellulosic materials like wood chips cost-competitive with corn-based ethanol by 2012, allowing for greater renewable fuel use.
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