U.S. Warned of Increasing Rate of Oil Imports : Experts Say Dependency Nears ‘Crisis Proportions’

Some U.S. energy experts, concerned that the country is importing more than half its oil for the first time in a decade, warned Thursday that foreign dependency is again reaching “crisis proportions.”

The analysts said the long gasoline lines and escalating prices of the 1970s, along with the economic dislocation that followed, could become more than a memory.

The American Petroleum Institute reported Wednesday that in July, for the first time in 12 years, imports provided more than half of the oil needs of the United States.

“You have to acknowledge that it is reaching crisis proportions,” said G. Henry M. Schuler, an expert in energy security for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

‘Matter of Concern’

Pentagon spokesman Fred Hoffman said the increasing dependence on oil was “a matter of concern” but noted that the country has long been dependent on oil from foreign sources.

Schuler said Americans have become complacent because they assume oil exporters are incapable of maintaining production discipline.

“I don’t think that’s the case at all,” he said.

Schuler said rising crude imports put at risk national security, which he and others broadly defined in terms that include the nation’s economy as much as its military security.

“The crisis of 1973 and 1979 was not really a military crisis or a physical interdiction,” he recalled.

Instead, he said, the cut in oil supplies caused an economic dislocation that produced “stagflation”--a stagnant economy combined with inflation.

Political Price

“That is in my judgment the danger that we face again,” he said. “It’s not a physical shortage if we’re prepared to pay the financial and political price required of us.”

Schuler said oil prices could jump by up to one-third in a year. U.S. crude currently fetches nearly $19 a barrel.

A 33% rise, while lower than the huge increases of the 1970s, still would be enough to adversely affect the U.S. economy, he said.

Bob Ebel, a vice president of the Ensearch Corp. of Dallas, said a war in the Middle East or a coup in an important oil-producing country could trigger an immediate escalation in prices.

“We’re not good at predicting what will happen,” said Ebel, whose company is involved with construction and energy production.

“We didn’t see the fall of the Shah of Iran or the Iran-Iraq war coming,” he said. “Who’s to say something won’t happen tomorrow?”