In the recent, Academy Award-winning film There Will Be Blood, one man's lust for oil - and the power and wealth that comes with it - eventually drives him mad. The timing of the film is ironic. Because as the summer driving season approaches amid record gas prices, many frustrated Americans are questioning the sanity of their government's heavy reliance on foreign oil from OPEC. The group--which is made up of 13 of the world's most petroleum-rich nations--sets the market price for oil worldwide. To paraphrase Daniel Day Lewis's sinister oilman in TWBB, OPEC drinks America's milkshake when it comes to gas prices. But the staus quo remains, despite President Bush's admission that the U.S. is "addicted" to foreign oil. Consider these numbers:
--The U.S. will import over 400 billion dollars worth of oil in 2008.
--In 1985, 20 percent of America's oil came from abroad. Today, that number is nearly 60 percent.
--The price of oil was $11 a barrel in 1999. It went to $22 a barrel in 2001. It shot up to $50 a barrel in 2004, and now it's at a $100 a barrel. Even better: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez have been threatening to raise the cost to 200 dollars a barrel. Given that their nations are both powerful members of OPEC, their scheme may not be as implausible as it sounds.
The threats emanating from Tehran and Caracas highlight an important point: that America's reliance on foreign oil has profound national security implications. OPEC nations may have an abundance of oil, but nearly all of them lack democracy and human rights. Worse, some of them, like Iran, are state sponsors of terrorism. Others, like Venezuela under Chavez, are sworn enemies of the United States. Then there's Saudi Arabia, the undisputed kingpin of OPEC. Oil isn't the Saudis' only export.. For decades, the Saudis have used a sizable chunk of their oil profits to spread their brand of radical Wahhabi Islam around the globe. Former C.I..A. Director James Woolsey recently told me that "the Saudis control about 90 percent of the world's Islamic institutions. And oil is the reason for that."
As if Americans weren't angry enough about getting shafted at the pump. Now they're faced with the indignity of knowing that the money they're pouring into gas may very well be going to finance, say, Iran's nuclear program. Or it's support for Hezbollah and Hamas. Or maybe some will be poured into a Saudi-run elementary school somewhere in the United States that teaches students to regard Jews as apes and Christians as swine.
Okay, I think we've identified the problem. But what is the solution? I recently sat down with Dr. Robert Zubrin to get some answers. Zubrin is a brilliant guy and a real Renaissance Man, as you can see from his bio. He says the way for America to break what he calls OPEC's "energy monopoly" is through the use of flex fuel vehicles.
Flex fuel vehicles run on a mixture of gasoline and either ethanol or methanol, two alcohol fuels. If you put 85 percent ethanol and, say, 15 percent gasoline into your car, your gas bills are obviously going to be much lower. The less gas your car requires, the less money goes to OPEC. Zubrin wants Congress to pass a law mandating that all new cars sold in the U.S.-- not made, sold - be flex fueled.
"What this would do is put 50 million cars on the road in the United States within three years capable of running on alcohol," he told me.
"If we made it the American standard that to sell a car here it has to be flex-fueled, that means all the foreign carmakers would switch their cars over to flex fuel. And gasoline would be forced to compete at the pump against alcohol not only in Iowa, but in Argentina and Kenya and Poland: everywhere."
It's an intriguing idea that has plenty of supporters as well as critics. For instance, many point to the increase in ethanol production (for use in flex fueled vehicles) as the reason for soaring food prices in the Third World.
Click on the viewer above to watch my report. What do you think of Zubrin's idea?