It might be the last truly bipartisan policy aim in Washington, and the least plausible one: Every U.S. president since Richard Nixon has pledged allegiance to the goal of "energy independence," even as the United States has remained dependent on imported oil. And as China's appetite for fossil fuels surpasses America's, energy anxiety has gone global -- just in time for another presidential election year.
1859
Edwin L. Drake drills the world's
first oil well outside Titusville, Pennsylvania.
1865
In The Coal Question, British economist William Stanley Jevons warns that Britain
is in danger of running out of coal, threatening the
country's strategic and economic preeminence -- a matter, he writes, of "almost
religious importance."
1912
Winston Churchill, then first lord of the
admiralty, begins converting Britain's Royal Navy -- the world's largest-from coal
to oil, exchanging energy independence for power and speed. Over the next
several years, Britain wrestles the oil fields of the Persian Gulf away from a
crumbling Ottoman Empire.
December 1940: Adolf Hitler launches plans to invade the Soviet Union, the main oil supplier of petroleum-poor Nazi Germany. Hitler also builds plants to convert coal into synthetic petroleum, turning out 124,000 barrels a day by 1944.
July 26, 1941: Alarmed by Japan's incursions into Indochina, the U.S. government freezes Japanese assets in the United States, imposing a de facto oil embargo on Tokyo. The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor just over four months later.
Summer 1942: Hitler launches a new offensive against the Soviet Union in hopes of capturing the Caspian oil fields. The resulting defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943 marks the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
1960
Oil exporters Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, and Venezuela form the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
After taking power in a military coup, Muammar al-Qaddafi starts nationalizing Libya's oil fields -- then the source of 30 percent of Europe's oil imports -- thus beginning Western oil companies' expulsion from the Arab world.
1970
The United States becomes a net
oil importer.
1971
Oil production in Texas, the motherland of
U.S. crude, begins to decline. "Texas oil fields have
been like a reliable old warrior that could rise to the task when needed,"
Texas Railroad Commission Chairman Byron Tunnell says. "That old warrior can't
rise anymore."
1972
"The era of low-cost energy
is almost dead," U.S. Commerce Secretary Peter G. Peterson declares. "Popeye is
running out of spinach."
1973
April: In a Foreign Affairs article titled "The
Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf Is Here," James E. Akins, who would become U.S.
ambassador to Saudi Arabia that fall, warns that "the
threat to use oil as a political weapon must be taken seriously."
October: Egypt and Syria launch a surprise attack on Israel, beginning the Yom Kippur War. The United States responds with $2.2 billion in arms and aid to Israel. The following day, OPEC declares a halt to oil shipments to the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. By January 1974, oil prices have more than quadrupled.
November 7: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces "Project Independence," a plan to wean the United States off foreign oil. The dream of American energy independence is born.
1975
The U.S. Congress passes the Energy Policy and
Conservation Act, creating the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and imposing the first fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles.
1977
U.S. President Jimmy Carter makes energy independence the
central ambition of his presidency,
later establishing the Department of Energy, investing billions of dollars in
research and development, and installing solar panels at the White House.
1979
An uprising topples Iran's
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and one of the two
pillars of U.S. energy supply in the Middle East crumbles, leaving only Saudi
Arabia.
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