U.S. Military World’s Leading Gas Guzzler

The U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s leading consumer of petroleum, sucking up about 340,000 barrels of oil every day, more than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.

Michael Klare, in an article for TomDispatch.com, looks at the results of a recent study conducted for the Department of Defense which concludes that U.S. global military strategy is “unsustainable” from an energy perspective due to rising energy prices and looming oil peak.

Will the Pentagon go green, and maintain its expansion and preemptive policies by relying on a more “sustainable” energy base?

Or, as Klare suggests is more likely, will the American military continue to transform itself into a “global oil-protection service”.

Klare writes: “To ensure itself a “reliable” source of oil in perpetuity, the Pentagon will increase its efforts to maintain control over foreign sources of supply, notably oil fields and refineries in the Persian Gulf region, especially in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This would help explain the recent talk of U.S. plans to retain “enduring” bases in Iraq, along with its already impressive and elaborate basing infrastructure in these other countries.”