WATCHING WASHINGTON A THRIFTY ENERGY USER

With Patrick Crow You've heard it said before: The U.S. is a profligate, greedy consumer of energy. Reacting to the Bush administration's National Energy Strategy, a Midwest congressman last week made a familiar point: The U.S. has about 5% of the world's population yet uses 25% of its energy. But is the U.S. an energy wastrel? Respected oil industry analysts say "no." Ted Eck, chief economist for Amoco Corp., told a Center for Strategic & International Studies seminar in Washington

March 4, 1991

3 min read

You've heard it said before: The U.S. is a profligate, greedy consumer of energy.

Reacting to the Bush administration's National Energy Strategy, a Midwest congressman last week made a familiar point: The U.S. has about 5% of the world's population yet uses 25% of its energy.

But is the U.S. an energy wastrel? Respected oil industry analysts say "no."

THE U.S. SCENE

Ted Eck, chief economist for Amoco Corp., told a Center for Strategic & International Studies seminar in Washington last week the aspersion is undeserved.

Eck said, "The U.S. is actually a thrifty user of energy." Its autos are twice as efficient as autos built 20 years ago and are as energy efficient as cars used in Europe and Japan. Transportation accounts for 40-45% of U.S. oil use.

He said most of the increase in oil demand in recent years has been in the commercial sector-diesel fuel, jet fuel, and chemical manufacture.

"There has been steady declining use by individuals of oil for automobiles and home heating. We were already very efficient, and now we are using less and less."

Eck pointed out that a very large percentage of oil is used to manufacture and transport goods, and "to the extent we make petroleum more expensive or less available, we burden our industry with competitive costs it may not be able to bear."

William O'Keefe, vice-president and chief executive officer of the American Petroleum Institute, agrees.

"I don't subscribe to the premise that people are so dumb they just waste energy. They don't throw money away when they can save it."

He said if the U.S. wanted to reduce demand for gasoline and heating oil, an effective method would be to raise taxes, a route western Europe and Japan have taken frequently.

"But we are not like western Europe and Japan," O'Keefe said. "We are spread out over a nation about 3,000 miles east to west, with people distributed all over this large mass.

"We have made policies in the past that have allowed people to buy homes and live great distances from where they work. We have a transportation and economic infrastructure that uses fuel to move goods.

"Japan has half the population we do, occupying an area about the size of Montana. So if we wanted to squeeze everybody on the East and West coasts into an area the size of Montana, we would see demand go down.

"When you look at consumption adjusted for geography, they are not greatly more efficient than we are. We've done some analyses of home heating. When you look at cost per square foot it's about the same. They live in spaces that are about a third of what we do."

DRIVING, GASOLINE TAX

O'Keefe said cars are basically the same in the U.S., western Europe, and Japan. "The difference is they're driving shorter distances."

O'Keefe, who rides the subway to work in Washington, D.C., said people who live in areas with adequate public transportation would be little affected by higher gasoline taxes.

"A large tax would be very regressive in the heartland of the U.S.," he said. "It's the people in Wyoming, Montana, and Michigan who would really pay the price. We're just not the same as Japan and Europe."