Reply #30: US military oil pains

[Octafish]

I'm all for having the strongest military in the world,



but not at the price of killing innocent people for their oil.

Whatever happened to "buying" stuff? Like Sunni and Shia, the word must be something else Bush never heard about.

US military oil pains

by Sohbet Karbuz

As of September 30, 2005 the US Air Force had 5,986 aircraft in service. (1)

At the beginning of 2006 the US Navy had 285 combat and support ships, and around 4,000 operational aircraft (planes and helicopters). (2)

At the end of 2005, the US Army had a combat vehicle fleet of approximately 28,000 armored vehicles (tracked vehicles such as Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles)(3). Besides those the Army and the Marine corps have tactical wheeled vehicles such as 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles. The US Army has also over 4,000 combat helicopters and several hundred fixed wing aircraft.

Add all those also 187,493 fleet vehicles (4) (passenger cars, busses, light trucks etc) the US Department of Defense (DOD) uses.

The issue is that except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, almost all military fleet (including the ones that will be joining in the next decade) run on oil.

Yes, the US military is completely addicted to oil. Unsurprisingly, its oil consumption for aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities makes the Pentagon the single largest oil consumer in the world. By the way, according to the 2006 CIA World Factbook rankings there are only 35 countries (out of 210) in the world that consume more oil per day than the Pentagon.

An interesting point is that even though there are only a few data sources, how much oil the Pentagon really consumes is still kind of puzzle, at least to me.(5)

According to recently released ?Annual Energy Management Report?, in Fiscal Year 2006 the Pentagon consumed 320,000 barrels per day of site delivered oil, compared to about 360,000 barrels per day in 2005. Note that these and all other official figures do not include fuel obtained at no cost overseas(6), fuel consumed by contractors(7), fuel consumed in some leased and privatized facilities, and not last but least oil consumed by certain leased and rented fleet vehicles.

While the official figures for military oil consumption went down in 2006, the costs went to the sky. In 2005 DoD had spent slightly over $8.5 billion for oil but this figure reached $17 billion in 2006. Note that oil accounts for 85% of the DoD?s $20 billion energy consumption costs in 2006.

CONTINUED...

http://www.energybulletin.net/26194.html

Thanks for the kind kick, BushDespiser12.