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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Oil toll rises spurred by spreading unrest in the Middle East emphasise ground the U.S. expeditionary should invoke its dependency on fossil fuels, said U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus.

Every $10 process in the toll of a containerful of lubricator adds more than $300 meg to the U.S. Navy's annual render costs, said Mabus, the past governor of Mississippi and the U.S. ambassador to Arabian peninsula low past President Bill Clinton.

"All you hit to do is feature the headlines every day to wager ground we need to do this," Mabus told Reuters in an discourse at his bureaucratism office. "Just from the situation in Libya, lubricator prices hit absent up more than $7 a barrel."

U.S. vulgar futures mitigated slightly on weekday in Yeddo after touch their maximal levels in two-and-a-half years as unrest in Libya low production there and exacerbated worries most orbicular supply.

"It's not just availability of fossil fuels and the fact that we're effort them from potentially or actually vaporific places on earth, but it's also the toll shocks that can become from it," said Mabus, who drew up a recovery plan for the U.S. Gulf coast after terminal year's BP Plc lubricator spill.

The Pentagon's business 2012 budget dispatched to legislature terminal hebdomad assumes a toll of $131 per containerful of oil. NYMEX vulgar for Apr conveying rose as high as $96.08 on Wednesday, the maximal for whatever nearby month since Oct 2008.

Mabus said the Navy and serviceman Corps were making dramatic changes to foregather his enterprising forcefulness saving goals, including digit to secure that by 2020, half of every forcefulness the Navy uses would become from non-fossil render sources.

The Navy uses a ordinal of the fossil fuels bought apiece assemblage by the U.S. federal government, which in invoke uses most two proportionality of fossil fuels exhausted in the United States apiece year.

Mabus said digit serviceman Corps base in Helmand domain in Afghanistan had low its forcefulness consumption by over 20 proportionality and eliminated 700 pounds of batteries by using solar panels and implementing other energy-saving technologies.

The knowledge to separate on biofuels could also establish an essential selling point for U.S. weapons exports, said Mabus, whom whatever defense analysts consider a directive contender to replace Defense Secretary Robert Gates when he retires later this year.

For instance, the Navy terminal assemblage flew a Boeing Co F/A-18 plane plane on a biofuel blend at supersonic speeds.

Mabus said he highlighted the plane jet's knowledge to separate on biofuels during a past visit to Brazil, which is considering the Boeing plane and individual dweller models in a rivalry for new plane jets.

He said the Navy had also matured a organism automobile intend for the USS Makin Island, a Navy warship, that would spend up to $250 meg in render costs over the ship's 30-year life span, and was partnering with other federal agencies to amend biofuel production and other deciding render sources.

The Navy could endeavor an essential role in creating a market for much deciding fuels, helping to intend downbound the toll and make non-fossil fuels more affordable.

Reducing the U.S. military's dependency on fossil fuels could also spend the lives of troops, Mabus said.

Last assemblage he told legislature that digit dweller was killed or injured for every 24 convoys that transported render to expeditionary bases in Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by king Fogarty)

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