America has dangerously increased its oil vulnerability because of oil’s precipitous drop to about $35 per barrel. Canada, supplying about 10 percent of our 20 million barrel daily use, requires $70 per barrel of oil to produce.
At $35, much of Canada’s fast expansion has been shut down. America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve carries only two months’ worth of unrefined oil. A protracted interruption of our oil supply would throw us into a “Mad Max” scenario.
Yet the Obama administration has developed no contingency plan. What must it do? To survive, America must retrofit many of its 250 million gas-guzzling vehicles along with a surge of alternative fuels. We have the compressed natural gas (CNG), hydrogen, electric, biofuel, non-agrifuel ethanol, methanol and other alt-fuel technology right here right now.
We can compel Detroit to convert and retrofit now. We must lift Environmental Protection Agency sanctions against converting vehicles off oil. Take some of those billions, Mr. President, and help this country survive both its economic and petropolitical vulnerability.
In other words, we need a strategic plan now.
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