The Foreign Service Journal, December 2003

40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 3 n 1960, the idea of dependence on energy imports — to the extent that this would be a major consideration in our policies toward countries on the opposite side of the Earth — would have been as foreign to most Americans as a Japanese car. The oil production of the lower 48 states had not yet peaked (it did so 10 years later). We still exported nearly as much petroleum as we imported, and half the oil we did buy came from friendly, nearby Venezuela. Furthermore, coal was in equal demand as a fuel, and we had plenty of it. Yet the signs of our future dependence were there. America’s petroleum exports had already fallen by half from their T HE REALIZATION THAT OUR LARGEST AND MOST DEPENDABLE ENERGY SUPPLIER IS SITTING TO OUR NORTH HAS YET TO SINK INTO MOST A MERICANS ’ CONSCIOUSNESS . B Y J OHN S TEWART F O C U S O N W O R L D E N E R G Y I M AKING THE M OST OF U.S.-C ANADA E NERGY T IES John Dorman