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The following commodities must-read comes from Ted Morton in the Calgary Herald last week. Mr. Morton is a senior fellow at the Calgary School of Public Policy. He is also a former Minister of Energy and Finance in the government of Alberta. Here is a link to the original article. 

Morton: More reasons why Obama should approve Keystone

On June 6, the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi occupied France, President Barack Obama spoke at the U.S. military cemetery above Omaha Beach, where 9,387 American soldiers and airmen are buried.

The president said all the right things. He praised the fallen for their bravery and sacrifice. He reminded us that the freedom we enjoy was not free, but purchased with the blood, sweat and tears of our fathers and grandfathers.

I do not doubt either Obama’s sincerity or his good intentions in saying what he said. But when it comes to national security issues, more is required than good intentions. And while listening to the president, I could not help recalling the adage that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

With this in mind, I thought that it might be helpful to compose a brief history lesson on the strategic role of energy in ensuring the security of Americans over the past 70 years — a lesson with implications for the Keystone pipeline.

Question 1: Why on Dec. 7, 1941, did Japan conduct a devastating surprise air-raid on the U.S. Sixth Fleet in Pearl Harbor?

Answer: Because six months earlier, the U.S. had imposed an embargo on oil exports to Japan because of their war atrocities against the Chinese. About 93 per cent of Japan’s annual oil consumption was imported: 80 per cent from the United States. With the Sixth Fleet destroyed, Japan could and did capture the Shell refineries in the Dutch East Indies.

Question 2: Why in 1941 did Hitler break his nonaggression pact with Stalin and invade the Soviet Union?

Answer: To control the large Russian oilfields at Baku. Germany had virtually no oil of its own, and oil was essential to its blitzkrieg strategy of mechanized warfare — the Luftwaffe and Panzer tank divisions that crushed French and English forces in 1940. As one historian later wrote, “Hitler’s obsession was oil.”

Question 3: What country supplied 90 per cent of the fuel used by the Allies to defeat Hitler and the Nazis in Europe?

Answer: The United States. Going into the war, the U.S. was the largest producer of oil in the world and remained an exporter of oil until 1948. But by 1973 — and the first OPEC oil embargo — the U.S. was importing 6.2 million barrels of oil a day, or about 30 per cent of its daily consumption. By 2006, oil imports had doubled to 13.4 million barrels a day, or 60 per cent of daily consumption.

Question 4: Why in 1941 were German Gen. Erwin Rommel (“the Desert Fox”) and his Panzer tank divisions fighting the British in North Africa?

Answer: To gain control of Cairo, the Suez Canal and Anglo-Iranian (later British Petroleum) oil shipments from Iran and Iraq.

Question 5: How in 1942 did the British finally defeat Rommel at El Alamein?

Answer: Rommel had no fuel left for his Panzer tank divisions. “Shortage of petrol,” he wrote to his wife. “It’s enough to make one weep.” In his memoirs, Rommel recorded, “The battle is fought and decided by the Quartermasters before the shooting begins.”

Question 6: Why in August 1944, did U.S. Gen. George Patton and his Third Army not cross the undefended bridges across the Rhine and into Germany?

Answer: Like Rommel two years earlier, Patton ran out of gas. He had told Allied Supreme Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, “Dammit, just give me 400,000 gallons of gasoline and I’ll put you inside Germany in 10 days.” But Eisenhower was persuaded otherwise by British Gen. Bernard Montgomery.

Question 7: Why in 1953, during the Cold War that followed the Second World War, did the U.S. and Britain organize a coup d’etat in Iran and support a military dictator (the Shah) for the next 25 years?

Answer: To pre-empt a military alliance between Iran and the Soviet Union that would have threatened the supply lines of Middle Eastern oil to Western Europe and the U.S.

Question 8: Why today is the Strait of Hormuz the most heavily militarized sea lane in the world?

Answer: 20 per cent of the world’s petroleum — and 35 per cent of the oil shipped by sea — passes through the 21-mile-wide strait. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard controls the north bank, while a joint American-British naval force defends the south shore and the sea lanes.

Question 9: Why in the last two decades has China doubled its defence spending — with a focus on building new submarines?

Answer: For energy security. China is now the second largest importer of oil in the world, after the U.S. Note that submarines are worthless for coastal defence, but very good at controlling sea lanes.

Question 10: Why has China militarized the Malacca Straights with new missile defence systems designed specifically to destroy aircraft carriers?

Answer: 75 per cent of China’s oil imports — all from the Persian Gulf — pass through the Malacca Straights.

Question 11: Why today won’t Germany and France support harsher trade sanctions against Russia for its aggression against Ukraine?

Answer: The European Union depends on Russia for 39 per cent of its imported natural gas and 33 per cent of its oil imports. They fear that Putin would retaliate by shutting it off. And he would!

Question 12: Why have young American men and women been fighting and dying in the Middle East —
over 7,000 deaths — since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991?

Answer: Hint: See answers to Questions 3 and 8.

Question 13: Why should Obama approve the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring 830,000 barrels of Canadian oil a day to U.S. refineries?

Answer: As former governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, famously said: “You don’t have to send
the National Guard into Alberta.”

If Obama cares as much about the American soldiers of tomorrow as he does about those who died on the Normandy beaches in 1944 — and I don’t doubt that he does — then he should approve the Keystone pipeline.

Source: Calgary Herald