OneWorld.net (U.S.)

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 11 (OneWorld) - The loss of 400,000 barrels of oil a day caused by the closure of BP's Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska could be offset if all the cars and trucks in the United States got just one extra mile per gallon of fuel efficiency, a prominent non-profit grouping of scientists said this week.

The report from the Washington, DC-based Union of Concerned Scientists also says United States drivers would spend $50 million less each day on gasoline with the modest improvement of gas mileage.

"The pipeline shutdown reminds us that we need to start kicking our oil habit," the group's Clean Fuels researcher David Friedman said in a statement. "Over the course of a year, that would be $18 billion that could be spent strengthening our economy and creating jobs across the country."

Those statistics take on added meaning, Friedman told OneWorld, when one considers that cars and light trucks sold in America actually get worse gas mileage than they did 20 years ago. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, motor vehicles made by Honda, Toyota, Volkwagen, Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, General Motors, Ford, and Daimler-Chrysler average fewer miles per gallon (mpg) than they did in 1987.

Congressional efforts to mandate better fuel efficiency were blocked in both the House and Senate this year. Three bills were introduced in Congress this year to force auto-makers to boost fuel economy by 10 miles per gallon by 2016, but the Republican leadership refused to schedule any of them for a vote.

"It's great that the auto companies are now making hybrids," Friedman said, "but there's no reason that they can't make a mini-van or an SUV that gets 30 miles per gallon so soccer moms with three kids in car seats would be able to buy fuel efficient vehicles. That would be the patriotic thing to do."

The EPA reports the average car now gets 24.6 mpg on the highway. For the modal year 2006, light trucks and sport utility vehicles now get 18.4 mpg. Half of all new car sales are trucks and SUVs.

Environmentalists say, with the price of gas at the pump soaring over $3 a gallon, automakers ignore fuel efficiency at their own peril.

America's largest automaker General Motors lost more than $10.6 billion last year. Chief rival Ford lost $254 million during the second quarter this year and has announced plans to cut 25,000-30,000 jobs and close 14 facilities by the end of 2012.

"Stresses within the U.S. auto industry were already evident before oil prices started climbing in mid-2004," the Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown wrote in the new book Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. "Now General Motors and Ford, both trapped with their heavy reliance on sales of gas-hogging sport utility vehicles, have seen Standard and Poor's lower their credit ratings, reducing their corporate bonds to junk bond status."

As oil prices continue to rise, Brown believes affiliated industries like auto parts and tire manufacturers will also be hurt. Unlike previous price spikes, he doesn't think this one will go away.

"Things have tightened," he said. "North Sea oil is declining, the Saudis can't ever produce much more than they now are. There was a tendency in the (oil) industry generally that there was more oil out there and (they should) try to convince the world that there was no need to make any serious adjustments in oil consumption because there was plenty of oil. But we're now learning that there's not plenty of oil."

Brown believes that means in addition to looking for more fuel efficient cars, Americans will have to make adjustments in the way they live. Cities may become more popular than suburbs, for example, because driving long distances to work may no longer be financially viable.

The long-term scarcity of oil also means that new fuels will have to be used to transport goods and people in the future. The government and the auto companies are now positioning corn-based ethanol as part of the solution to high gas prices, but observers say even if America's entire corn crop was turned into ethanol it would only supply a small fraction of America's cars.

In California this November, voters will have the chance to take matters into their own hands.

"The solution that's quite elegant and quite intriguing is called Proposition 87, under which a fee would be placed on oil production to be used to reduce our reliance on oil by developing clean, cheap alternative fuels," explained Michael Shames of the San Diego-based Utility Consumers Action Network.

The oil companies have come out strongly against the measure, however. Campaign filings show Chevron, Shell, and Exxon have put a combined $24 million into a campaign to defeat the proposition.