What is energy independence?
So the USGS has almost completed the survey of the Bakken Formation. Estimates on the amount of oil contained in the shale formation range from 900 billion to 200 billion barrels.
A poster on Slashdot said that “Such a reserve would go a long way toward securing US energy independence.”
What exactly is energy independence? It seems to me that unless the United States starts taking alternatives to oil and coal more seriously that we are just trading dependence on foreign sources of petroleum for dependence on domestic ones. Is that really much better?
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For the most part the United States is dependent upon foreign countries to supply us with the raw or finished material. The United States currently does not produce enough oil from domestic sources to fulfill even half the amount we currently use. We manipulate governments and companies where we can acquire oil ending the oil flow today would tumble our economy into a dire depression worse than the Great Depression.
Therefore, Energy Independence is a return to isolationism whereby we produce the raw material for ourselves and are no longer needing to depend on other countries.
It is less about energy than about foreign policy.
Our uranium comes from Australia and Canada. Though, as I understand it, our pressure on South Africa to end Aparteid was after obtaining our independence from SA uranium in the late 1980s.