The major U.S. military preparedness implications of the SPS result from its ability to supply energy. The embargo on the export of petroleum products to selected countries in October of 1973 by the OPEC nations, and the realization that petroleum is a limited resource, have placed a high national priority on energy and energy-related issues. Objectives have been established to: • Conserve energy; • Increase domestic oil and gas production while reducing the use of oil and gas; • Convert oil and gas electric plants to other fuels, such as coal, hydro, nuclear, solar; • Develop the inexhaustible energy resources; • Reduce oil imports; and • Develop a billion barrel petroleum reserve. The embargo has pointed out to the military the necessity of having a reliable source for each form of energy or fuel that it uses and has caused accelerated energy planning. Military bases, for example, have introduced programs to supply much of their own energy requirements and to reduce their dependence on outside sources. These basic energy availability and use issues implicate the SPS in U.S. military preparedness. Many in the military community who have surveyed the problem believe that the United States will begin to be affected by the fuel shortage by 1985 or 1990; costs are already reducing fuel availability to some of the population. The power expected from the SPS cannot relieve these early shortages directly, but its imminence may encourage a freer flow of oil into the market, thereby keeping a bad situation from becoming intolerable.-^ If the SPS comes on line, its power can begin to be used in the following ways: • Strengthen the civilian/industrial sector, allowing more effective support to the military in the areas of technology, production, and capital; • Free larger quantities of portable fuels required for military mobility (and mobility related stockpiling); Dr. William Shurcliff has pointed out that the encouragement of a freer flow (and use) of oil, with the prospects of an SPS that in fact does not come on line, could hasten and intensify the ultimate energy bind.
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