Can anyone think of a better way to fight terrorism, than to stop using oil?

Question

I am not anti oil, anti company profits, or an extreme tree hugger, but I think countries that support terrorism probably make $0.25 (this is a guess) for every gallon of gas or home heating oil we use.

Also wouldn't the US government be better served in this battle by forcing the price of oil down to lower prices than to build jets and bombs? (Also, I am more hawkish than doveish)

Wow, I already received a lot of responses.

I am not asking anyone to make any huge sacrifices. Switching from oil to propane or natural gas at home would reduce use of oil without any discomfort to the user.

If the government shifted some defense funds to developing alternate energies, that would reduce the demand for oil.

If the government even hinted they may release strategic reserves the price of oil could drop $10

I someone also mentioned that they hate us with or without us buying their oil, but they couldn't afford to buy as many missiles if oil was $10 per barrel. and at that level they may even need humanitarian aid to feed their people...?

Answer 1

Currently, about 45% of all of oil consumption goes towards gasoline production. Another 21% goes towards home heating oil. Even if we were able to eliminate that consumption tomorrow, we would only drop our oil consumption by 66%. While that's significant, the immediate result of it would be drop oil prices.

Now, it costs a certain amount of money per barrel to extract oil from the ground. In some places it costs more than others. The U.S. is one of the most expensive places to extract oil - primarily due to regulations. The Middle East is one of, if not the, cheapest. Given this, what do you think would be the most likely result of a drop in world wide oil prices? The most likely result would be a decimation of U.S. DOMESTIC oil production. Though we could meet our needs domestically, without price supports, tariffs, deregulation, or an outright ban on imported oil we would probably just end up buying the rest of oil we use from the Middle East. And, the Middle East would be able to set the price to just below the point where it started becoming economical for consumer countries to produce it themselves.

Just reducing our oil consumption wouldn't get the job done. There would have to be further political involvement - which would have foreign policy implications, not the least of which would be a (correctly) perceived deliberate attack by the U.S. on the Middle East economies.

Answer 2

In having worked for Mobil Oil and just 6 years after the merger when the last of the heritage Mobil Oil Employees were thrown out, we had processes in place to prevent this spike within the industry. Trading is the problem coupled with the lack of refining capacity and with the war now consuming our tax dollars, they are utilizing the profits of the big oils to offset the cost of the War. Oil had settled to 40 dollars (and below) a barrel however if you recall when the US Supreme Court ruled that George no longer had a credit card in support in payment for the WAR, the product spiked.

Question that must be asked now is: What happen to the 2700 synthetic fuel pattens that Exxon inherited from Mobil in 1999 ??

AGC 21 Technology (Synthetic Crude)
M Gasoline Technology _ Conversion of Natural Gas into Synthetic Gasoline and at a cost of 41 cents per gallon.

The very first synthetic fuels (gasoline plant) was New Zealand Synthetic Fuels by which 25 percent of the ownership was to Mobil. Today, they manufacture synthetic gasoline at 25 dollars per 42 gallon barrel yield.

The earth will never run out of fuel (I.E Gasoline). Our heritiage Mobil Oil Scientists saw to that !!!

The mergers have created the problem that we face and with the Oils owned by the Arabs (Five of the six largest shareholders are Arabs for ExxonMobil) what do they care !! They control both sides of the process...... now thanks to the Federal Trade Commissions and Alan Greenspan (Fed Reserve) who beat the drums for these consolidations. Remember, they paid him well for his appearances at those luncheons!! Competition through synthetics would resolve this issue in no time flat! George honestly thought that this war would take 41 days. We are now going on our 4th year.

Answer 3

Oil as a weapon was used for the first time in 1973 after the Arab-Israeli war and Muslim nations who control most oil wealth realized for he first time the power of this weapon. So this threat is known for more than three decades and lot of research is already at hand for alternate solutions. Unfortunately present state of technological development is oil-based and will put great strain on economies if oil prices shoot up to say 200$ a barrel. It might also lead to more wars on diplomacy and real as well and may even lead to toppling of regimes sitting on oil fields and reaping benefits and doing nothing for their people. Not using oil is not a solution. If oil resource is unjustly used by regimes which are not working for the common good of their people then time will evolve/force solutions to eliminate this unjust control of oil.

Answer 4

Amazing how the first two answers here automatically resort to nuclear warfare and more violence. It's very difficult to fight an idea. Terrorism is an idea, not a military unit. It's almost impossible to defeat something that grows every time you destroy a part of it. Have you noticed how it has grown ever since we started fighting? I'll be honest, I don't know what else we can do. We can't nuke them, because that would just anger other countries that don't like us. We can't leave because that would just leave that part of the world overrun with them. It's a tough spot. I can say I'm a little more doveish, though not much, but that's just because I take death very seriously. So in short...I don't know. No one knows the right answer.

Answer 5

Terrorism existed and thrived long before the automobile, and terrorists will always come up with an excuse for their activities, even if we run our cars or heat our homes on solar power.

Even if "government" could cap or reduce oil prices here, the oil would just go to other countries willing to pay the higher price, and many of them have long paid twice what we do in the U.S.

Answer 6

Good IDEA ! The problem is that economic powers greater than us are in the game: not just the oil related industries, but also the weapon's industry have too much to loose where the world to find an alternative to oil...We are not talking about individual governments anymore, but about the infrastructure of economical powers that really rule the world...

Answer 7

I read somewhere that the US had the opportunity to drill oil wells in Alaska that would produce all the oil we would ever need and we would never have to rely on another country for oil again but because of the humanitarians or nature/animal activists the US decided not to.....Not sure about these details ....

Answer 8

How in the hell are we going to stop using oil in time to make a difference in the war on terror? First of most terrorists organizations are already rich, so they can sustain themselves even without new oil money, and second, it will take decades to ween our culture, economy, and infrastructure off fossil fuels. By then this war will be well over with and we'll be fighting a new war....over something else.

Answer 9

You have a simple solution for a complex issue. For the past century we have developed a dependence on oil word wide. In doing that we made insignificant countries rich and powerful. We are now having to repay the costs that this change to the world order created.

Answer 10

To change the price of oil, one has to change the economics of Renewable Energy. The oil economic disaster greater to investors than investing in Renewable Energy infrastructure is not having a replacement for fossil fuels.

The environmentalist equation to say Renewable Energy is directly economically viable - add in all the cost of damages fossil fuels create to the cost side of them while deleting all the capital cost from Renewable Energy side. This doesn't work for investors.