ASHINGTON, Nov. 25 — Nearly a dozen years after the Persian Gulf war, when reliance on Saudi supplies prompted calls for the United States to diversify its sources of oil, America remains as dependent as ever on the Saudis, according to government and industry officials.
The Saudis supply about one-sixth of United States oil imports. But what gives Saudi Arabia its considerable political strength is its role as the only producer with the spare capacity to replace millions of barrels a day of lost oil. That amount could be drained from the market temporarily by an attack on Iraq, according to the administration's internal assessments as well as outside experts.
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"The Saudis have by far the largest amount of unused capacity," Guy Caruso, the head of the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States have been strained since the participation of several Saudis in the Sept. 11 attacks last year prompted close scrutiny of the country's role in financing and otherwise supporting Islamic radicalism. But the Bush Administration's strategic options are clearly limited by American dependence on Saudi oil.
Saudi Arabia is now producing about eight million barrels a day, oil executives say. Saudi officials have said publicly that they could raise their output to 10 million barrels a day fairly quickly and to 10.5 million within three months. Most experts, as well as the Bush administration, accept the Saudi assurances.
If a war halts Iraq's oil exports — estimated at 1.5 million to 2 million barrels a day — the situation will be manageable, Mr. Caruso said. But it would be harder to replace a steeper decline in exports, which could occur if oil supplies from other Persian Gulf producers were reduced by terrorist attacks or by prohibitive insurance premiums on oil tankers.
In an interview, Mr. Caruso said the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve and stocks in other countries represented the other best defense against short-term disruptions.
Established in the 1970's as a response to an oil embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, which is based in Kuwait, the reserve now holds a record 592 million barrels, part of a Bush administration plan to reach 700 million barrels by 2005.
But because of increased American dependence on imported oil, the length of time the reserve can compensate for lost imports has declined from a high of 118 days in 1985 to 51 days at the end of last year. Some oil experts advocate increasing the reserve to one billion barrels.
Alan Larson, under secretary of state for economic affairs, went to Saudi Arabia last month to secure assurances that Riyadh would pump extra oil if it were needed, American and Saudi oil executives say.
Last month Mr. Caruso's office helped prepare an "oil market contingency planning" book, based entirely on public data. The Energy Department has restricted the book's distribution to keep it from Congress and the public, according to government officials.
In an interview last month, Mr. Caruso cited a small portion of the book's contents to illustrate the unique role of Saudi Arabia.
Because there are no reporting requirements in the international oil industry, capacity figures vary widely.
Mr. Caruso's agency estimates that Saudi Arabia has slightly more than half the spare production capacity of 4.5 million to 5 million barrels a day that exists in member nations of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
A group of experts led by Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, estimates that total spare capacity is only three million barrels, and that the Saudis control two-thirds of that.
In the three months after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the largest oil supply disruption in American history occurred, with the daily shortfall averaging 4.6 million barrels, government records show.