Bush urged to break US oil dependence (by CEOs and retired generals)

Bush urged to break US oil dependence
By Carola Hoyos in London, Edward Luce in Washington and Krishna Guha in Beijing
Published: December 13 2006 22:07 | Last updated: December 13 2006 22:07

The Bush administration should act decisively to break America’s dependence on oil, said a group of leading US business executives and senior military officers in a report presented on Wednesday to the White House and Congress.

The bipartisan group, which includes the chief executives of Fedex, UPS, Dow Chemicals and some of America’s best known retired generals, urged Washington to recognise that “pure market economics will never solve the problem” of US oil dependency.

The report poured cold water on the Bush administration’s goal of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil, rather than on oil in general. It urged Mr Bush and the new Democrat-controlled Congress to set up a plan to halve the American economy’s oil-intensity by 2030.

George W. Bush has repeatedly identified “energy independence” and immigration reform as two of the issues most likely to attract bipartisan support following the Republican loss of control of Capitol Hill in mid-term elections last month.

“Events affecting supply or demand anywhere will affect consumers everywhere,” said the report, brought out by the Energy Security Leadership Council, a think tank. “Exposure to price shocks is a function of how much oil a nation consumes and is not significantly affected by the ratio of “domestic oil” to so-called “foreign oil”.

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/afd97850-8ad7-11db-8940-0000779e2340.html