SOVIET OIL FUTURES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R000600230045-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 24, 2004
• Sequence Number: 45
• Publication Date: May 23, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600230045-2
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE A-10
THE WASHINGTON STAR (Green Line)
23 May 1978
Soviet oil futures
Having poked our noses into last spring's de-
bate about the credibility of CIA reports on
Soviet oil troubles. - and the use President Car-
ter made of them to boost his energy bill we
think it only fair to eat a bit of crow.
.?
You may have noticed that the staff of the
Senate Intelligence Committee undertook a
study of those CIA reports, submitting their
"integrity" and quality to painstaking study.
The resulting report, released this week, is a
model government paper - incisive, interesting
and judicious - a document that may reveal
'Wore about the gathering'and use of foreign-
intelligence in 30 pages than more 'sensational
studies do in hundreds.
The study is said by one reporter to "gently
chide" the CIA's experts in the Office of Eco-
nomic Research; and so it does. But the chiding
is on a relatively minor point; and few of the
parties to the discussion of April 1977 escape
unchided, including the press.
On April 15th 1977, to begin at the beginning,
President Carter told a press conference that he
was "quite alarmed" by "a long and detailed
study of international oil supplies" recently pre-
516
was of White House manufacture. But the Sen-
ate Intelligence Committee does not quarrel
with the "political" use of intelligence, "as long
as this. can be done without compromising any
sensitive sources or methods ... and the infor-
mation is made available to the* public so that
others may gauge the soundness of the argu-
ment." Which. is fair enough. "All of the infor-
mation needed to evaluate the strength of (CIA)
conclusions about Soviet oil production was
made available to the public by July, 1977," the
committee adds.
And what of the quality of the intelligence?
Was it on the mark? Were its sources suffi-
ciently solid? The committee's answer is a deci-
sive yes, qualified only in one major way. In its
view, the CIA experts were right to project a
substantial drop in Soviet oil production (rela-
tive to need and demand), but not necessarily
right in concluding that the Soviet Union (and.
its Eastern bloc dependents) would become
large net importers of foreign oil by the mid-
1980s. This prediction, it develops, assumed the'
improbable: that the Soviet Union would not go
to extraordinary lengths to stabilize demand
pared by the CIA. Three days later, this report and thus to avoid a drain on scarce reserves of
(The International Energy Situation: Outlook to hard currency. The exchange consideration,
,1985) was released. A second CIA report (Pros- apparently, could be paramount. The CIA's was,
pects for Soviet Oil? Production) followed some in other words, "a worst case" analysis and
days later. erred only in failing to make its assumptions as,
The, President's citation of these reports to clear as they might have been. "If the study is
-bolster-the case for his energy bill led us - and to be faulted, it ought to be faulted for its lack of
others - to ask a number of rather insulting clarity on that methodological point."
questions which now appear unwarranted. - The fine spadework of the Senate Intelligence .
We said, for instance, that "it came as a shock Committee staff, in addition. to showing how
that the CIA had moved into the tricky art of - easy it is for the press and public officials to dis-.
estimating international oil and gas reserves ... cover support for our preconceptions in a de-
Almost-alone, it appears, the CIA declares that Cached professional study, serves also to clear
the Soviet oil industry is 'in trouble,' that its oil the way for a sober consideration of the strate
production `will soon peak, possibly as early as
next year,' that by- the mid-1980s the Soviet
Union will become a net importer of oil." Other
skeptical comments were in the same vein;
most, including our own, were off-base.
Here, after a year's study of the CIA role in oil
production (not, in this .instance, oil reserve)
forecasting, is the Intelligence Committee's ver-
dict:
First, there is "no evidence" that the CIA tai-
lored its study to suit administration political
convenience. Nor (as Adm. Stansfield Turner
pointed out in a -letter to this newspaper last
May 8) was the oil study a new departure for the
CIA.
Secondly, whatever political inspiratiori fig-
ured in the publicity given to the_ CIA studies
gic implications of the Soviet oil dilemma. - ? `1
The expert belief is that the Soviet Union does
have an oil problem. The alternatives, presume
ably, are to stabilize demand and/or undertake
conservation measures; to use American tech-
nology (now being supplied) to improve oil yield
in water-saturated oil fields; - or to try to fix a
grip on foreign sources that might be brought
within its own currency area.
The latter option might, if one were given to
gloomy imaginings, explain much about recent
Soviet maneuvers in the oil-rich areas of the
Middle East. Certainly the latest findings deci-
sively undermine the comfortable old assump
tion that the Soviet, Union has oil to swim in and
will never become a competitor in the interna-
tional rat-race for dependable oil sources.
Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600230045-2