[Al Ahram] Forty years after an Arab oil embargo throttled the U.S. economy, surging North American energy production has brought the United States closer to a long-dreamed "energy independence" that is reshaping its goals and role in the Middle East.On October 17, 1973, OPEC announced an oil embargo against the United States and any other country that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War. That use of oil as a diplomatic weapon has driven an American yearning for disengagement from the Middle East and its problems ever since.
Such a strategic divorce is unlikely to occur soon, current and former U.S. officials say. Washington has too much invested in the region, from support for allies like Israel to the fight against Islamic bad boys.
But the United States is less vulnerable to Middle East oil shocks, current and former U.S. officials say, and may be less likely to station large ground and naval forces in the region in the future.
More problematically, it will have to find a way to cooperate in the Middle East with energy-hungry China, they said. And ties with Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
, long nurtured by oil commerce, have been jolted by diplomatic disagreements over Iran, Syria and Egypt, and could fray further.
In the decades that followed the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries embargo, "you could not make plans in the Middle East or involving Middle East crises, without keeping in mind the considerations of the oil market," Henry Kissinger, who was Secretary of State during the 1973 oil shock, said on Wednesday.
"But that is now changing substantially with the, I wouldn't say 'self sufficiency' but narrowing the gap between supply and demand in North America, that is now of huge strategic consequence," Kissinger said at a conference hosted by the group Securing America's Future Energy.
The United States is less reliant each month on Middle East energy, thanks to increasing production of both oil and natural gas from technologies such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which allows extraction of oil and gas from shale deposits.
The country could be energy self-sufficient -- producing enough to meet its own needs -- by 2020, according to several analyses, and a debate has begun on whether to end an effective ban on U.S. crude oil exports.
The growth of the United States as an energy power is already making a difference in foreign policy.
Last year, Washington and its European allies orchestrated a partial boycott of Iranian oil, to compel Tehran to return to talks about its nuclear program. The sanctions against Iran took roughly 1 million barrels per day off world markets - without the oil price spikes many predicted.
Increased oil supplies from the United States, and elsewhere, "really helped us tremendously in our negotiations," with potential partners, a senior State Department official said.
Energy superpower
Weary of war after years of costly conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is wary of intervening in crises like that in Syria, and took on a limited role in oil-rich Libya's 2011 civil war.
U.S. oil production has helped dampen price spikes from disruptions in places such as Libya, officials and analysts said, and with it pressure for U.S. intervention.
Retired Adm. Dennis Blair, former U.S. Director of National Intelligence, said that the United States' increased energy output affords it the flexibility to reposition some military forces now in the Middle East "over the horizon," where they could be called on in a crisis.
Blair did not suggest specifics, but said such a change would be a return to the traditional U.S. defense posture before a build up of U.S. forces in the region that began with a major oil tanker escort operation in the Gulf in the 1980s and increased with two wars with Iraq.
"We have the opportunity to refine our policy," he said.
Publicly and privately, U.S. officials increasingly are emphasizing that the United States has no plans to leave the Middle East or retreat into isolationism.
"Reduced energy imports do not mean the United States can or should disengage from the Middle East or the world," then-White House national security adviser Tom Donilon said in a speech in April.
"We have a set of enduring national security interests" in the region, Donilon said, citing Israel's security, the fight against terrorism and "our historic stabilizing role in protecting regional allies and partners."