Love Your Country’s Fuels
Over the recent holidays, I heard a friend say, “The cost of gasoline sure has dropped. I filled up for less than $50 today.”
As he was saying that, tensions with Iran were on the rise. And, little did he know, his next fill-up would be more expensive, and the one after that even higher, and the following a bit more costly.
I’m sure you know this, but it’s worth repeating: foreign relations play a major role in our oil supply, causing alarming fluctuations in prices that we as individual Americans have no control over.
In case you aren’t aware, Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane, which had 17 million barrels of oil per day pass through in 2011, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. This accounts for one-sixth of global oil production and nearly 20 percent of all the oil traded worldwide. Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz to all oil transports through the water channel, which would be a devastating blow to the United States’ fuel supply.
We Americans are great. We love progress. We love results. We love innovation. We love the things that we make. We love our country.
But, we don’t love our own fuels.
Yet.
The U.S. has abundant supplies of energy. Propane autogas, natural gas, biodiesel, ethanol, electricity — they’re all cleaner than gasoline, they’re all domestically produced, they all lessen our dependence on imported oil. But in fact, we’re exporting many of our own fuels. This makes no sense to me. Instead, if we used our own fuels, we strengthen our global economic position, and we can sleep at night knowing our energy sources truly are “made in the U.S.A.”
So please, do some homework, and consider using something other than a fuel from the Strait of Hormuz.
The job ahead of us to “lay off” foreign oil is a big one, one that requires a sustained focus. We shouldn’t be lulled back into passive behavior because of temporary relief at the pump. History has shown us that higher gasoline costs will be back — and it always hurts more when it comes back.
