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Must the West Depend on Mideast Oil?
Petroleum Supply and the National Security
- Abstract
THE United States need never, at any time we can now foresee, yield to economic or political pressure from any nation because of dependence on foreign petroleum supplies. We are not so dependent today, and need not be at any time in the 20th century. For a remoter time, we cannot now make rational provision. We shall then increasingly have other energy sources-and other problems.
Were the North American continent not so completely independent of imported oil, the United States would not today be a true world super-power. Among the other nations that pretend to world power, only the USSR has a comparable independence. When the 20th century opened, Russia was producing more than half of the world’s crude oil. Recently the Russians have announced that their 1975 goal is 8,000,000 barrels per day. It is perhaps no mere coincidence that this target can be described fairly accurately, in the year 1959, as “more than is being produced by the United States.”
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