Issue Briefs
The Military Cost of Defending the Global Oil Supply:
June 28, 2019
By Jonathan Chanis
According to the calculations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the cost to the United States of defending the global oil supply is zero. Failure to accurately assess the true military cost of protecting the global oil supply underestimates the value of the Fuel Economy Standards (FES) program to U.S. national security
The zero-cost estimate comes from the way the U.S. government budgets for national defense. Since it is difficult to assign a cost to the oil protection mission—and since the Department of Defense (DoD) would realize no savings if this mission were not pursued—EPA and NHTSA conclude that it is pointless to assign any value above zero for this activity. This approach fails to account for the large opportunity costs of protecting the global oil supply.
Read more on the link below.
Chanis. Military Cost of Defending the Global Oil Supply. Sep. 21. 2018 FINAL
The views and opinions expressed in this issue brief are those of the author.
 |
GPI Fellow and Senior Vice President of Policy, Jonathan Chanis is responsible for planning and directing the research, analysis, and writing of SAFE’s policy team. Before joining SAFE, Jonathan taught graduate students at Columbia University about energy security and scenario planning, and he consulted on petroleum and natural gas security, and supply and value chain management. |