"The Tyranny Of Oil" Revisited

Reprinting a chapter from my 2014 book, Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper, on EVs, energy density, and why “oil is a miracle substance”

During the 2007 announcement of his presidential bid, Barack Obama said “Let's be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil.” Photo credit: Chicago Sun-Times.

The International Energy Agency recently reported that global oil demand grew by 2.3 million barrels per day in 2023. The agency expects oil use to increase by 1.2 million Bbl/d this year. Meanwhile, OPEC expects oil use to jump by 2.2 million Bbl/d and by 1.8 million Bbl/d in 2025. Regardless of which estimate is correct, it is clear that oil demand continues to grow along with the global economy. Analyst Art Berman says “oil is the economy.” Indeed, like electricity, oil drives economic growth, and economic growth drives oil use.

Love it or hate it, if oil didn’t exist we’d have to invent it. No other fuel can match oil when it comes to energy density, cost, scale, flexibility, or ease of handling and transportation.

Nearly everything we touch, eat, or wear has been delivered to us by machines that burn gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel. A long time ago, Don Cheatham, a businessman who owned a railroad in Texas, told me, “Without transportation, there is no commerce.” But without oil, there’s no transportation. Therefore, if there’s no oil, there’s no commerce. Despite these apparent points, politicians – Republicans and Democrats alike – have routinely derided the importance of oil to the economy and our daily lives. In his 2006 State of the Union, George W. Bush, a Republican from Texas who tried his hand in the oil industry, declared, “America is addicted to oil.”

Last week, the EPA finalized a rule that mandates U.S. automakers to dramatically increase their production of electric vehicles. By 2032, more than half of the cars they sell will have to be fully electric. Although the agency doesn’t mention oil or gasoline in its press release, it did include “oil conservation” in the final rule. That document, by the way, is 1,181 pages long. The word “gasoline” appears on 117 of those 1,181 pages.

The EV mandate, along with the never-ending campaigns by various NGOs that claim we should go “beyond oil,” as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential run, prompted me to revisit my fifth book, Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving The Catastrophists Wrong, which was published in 2014.

One of the chapters in that book is called “The Tyranny of Density.” It’s as relevant today as it was in 2014, and it even mentions EVs and Kennedy. I created two charts to go with this piece to show the ongoing growth in oil use here in the U.S. and globally. Here’s the chapter:

Among the Mount Everest of inanities ever uttered on the subject of energy, the blue-ribbon winner must be this one: “the tyranny of oil.”

Both Barack Obama and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have used the line. Obama claimed it for his own in 2007 during a speech in which he declared his run for the White House. While standing on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, Obama said, “Let's be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil.^”

In March 2013, during a speech at Sandhills Community College in North Carolina, Kennedy, a high-profile opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline (he was arrested at the White House during an anti-Keystone protest), said “Now we need to free ourselves from the tyranny of oil.”

That Obama and Kennedy — both of whom went to Harvard — are claiming that a super-high-energy density substance that can be deployed for innumerable purposes, from pumping well water in Kenya to emergency generation of electricity in Lower Manhattan, is somehow bad or even yet, tyrannical, is nonsense on stilts. Rather than talk about the tyranny of oil, the two Harvard grads might as well be complaining about the tyranny of physics. Or better yet, the tyranny of density.

Few substances this side of uranium come close to touching oil when it comes to the essential measure of energy density: the amount of energy (which is measured in joules or BTUs) that can be contained in a given volume or mass. In addition to petroleum’s high energy density, it is stable at standard temperature and pressure, relatively cheap, easily transported, and can be used for everything from making shoelaces to fueling jumbo jets.

Oil’s tyranny of density can be demonstrated by looking at the aviation sector and by doing a tiny bit of math. To make the math easy, let’s use metric units. And let’s focus on weight, as that factor is critical in aerospace. The gravimetric energy density of jet fuel is high: about 43 megajoules (million joules) per kilogram. (Low-enriched uranium, by the way, is 3.9 terajoules — trillion joules — per kilogram.)

Keep those numbers in mind as we look at the best-selling jet airliner in aviation history: the Boeing 737. A fully fueled 737-700 holds about 26,000 liters of jet fuel, weighing about 20,500 kilograms. That amount of fuel contains about 880 gigajoules (billion joules) of energy. The maximum take-off weight for the 737-700 is about 78,000 kilograms, therefore jet fuel may account for as much as 26 percent of the plane’s weight as it leaves the runway.

Obama and Kennedy are big fans of electric cars. Lithium-ion batteries have higher energy density than most other batteries, holding about 150 watt-hours — 540,000 joules — of energy per kilogram. Recall that jet fuel contains about 43 million joules per kilogram, or nearly 80 times as much energy. Therefore, if Boeing were trying to replace jet fuel with batteries in the 737-700, it would need about 1.6 million kilograms of lithium-ion batteries. Put another way, to fuel a jetliner like the 737-700 with batteries would require a battery pack that weighs about 21 times as much as the airplane itself.

Prefer to use a “green” fuel like firewood? With an energy density of about 16 megajoules per kilogram, that same 737-700 would require about 55,000 kilograms of wood. With that much kindling onboard, rest assured there won’t be room in the overhead bin for your carry-on bag.

Even at 35,000 feet, the simple truth is obvious: the only tyranny at work in our energy and power systems is that of simple math and elementary-school physics. Obama and Kennedy may not like oil, and their allies on the Left may hate Shell/BP/Marathon/Exxon/Saudi Aramco/Chevron/Keystone XL, but here’s the reality: oil is a miracle substance. Without it, modern society simply would not be possible.

Rather than condemning the fuel that makes modern life possible, our political leaders should be figuring out how we can make oil more available to more people at lower cost.

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