The terrorist attacks on September 11 and the subsequent demonstrations of anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East increase the saliency of America's dependence on oil imports from the Gulf states. The United States now imports more than half of all the oil it consumes, and roughly a quarter of those imports comes from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. If there is no change in U.S. policy, that dependence will grow, since those three countries together with the United Arab Emirates have more than half of the world's reserves of oil, while the United States has only two percent of total reserves.
America's dependence on imported oil is a serious cause of economic vulnerability and a major constraint on U.S. foreign and defense policy. Political leaders in the Middle East know that U.S. dependence on their oil gives them leverage over American policies. The possibility of increasing that leverage emboldened Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in order to extend the share of Mideast oil controlled by Iraq. And while the governments of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are basically friendly to the United States, recent events have made it clear how potentially vulnerable those governments are to radical elements within their own countries. All of this is a cloud over the stability of the oil supply from the Middle East.
Political leaders and expert commissions have been calling for a reduction in U.S. dependence on oil imports since at least 1974, when President Nixon established Project Independence with the goal of achieving energy independence by 1980. That goal was never reached. To the contrary, U.S. dependence on imported oil was still 42 percent of domestic consumption in 1980, and rose to 52 percent in 2000.
