With oil prices at all time highs and further increases likely, one would hope enlightened government leaders would finally come to grips with energy realities. America’s refusal to harvest its own energy resources — crude oil, kerogen, natural gas, hydro-electricity, nuclear, coal — has inevitably led to the demand for energy approaching the upper limits of supply, resulting in…anyone?…higher prices. To bring energy costs down, or more realistically, to keep them from skyrocketing even more, a complete overhaul of the nation’s energy policy is required. Production of all forms of energy must increase dramatically, and conservation efforts should also be accelerated. Incredibly, Washington politicians are bickering about inconsequential proposals that will do nothing to help the nation.
The three remaining presidential candidates are arguing over whether to suspend gasoline taxes for a few months. Hillary Clinton has teamed up with John McCain as advocates of the plan, but Barack Obama opposes the idea. Here’s a bulletin for our next president and the two losers: IT WON’T HELP. Attention all you capitalists out there. What will result from lowering the price of gasoline? That’s right – increased consumption, the very thing we should be trying to avoid. Besides, a temporary “fix” only postpones the implementation of real solutions. Artificially tinkering with inconsequential distractions while energy prices place a significant drag on the economy makes Nero’s fiddling look responsible.
Meanwhile, Congress and the President have locked horns over whether to continue stockpiling oil in the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Senators and Representatives overwhelmingly want the 70,000 barrels of oil being stored daily to be returned to the marketplace, but the President disagrees. Good arguments have been made by both sides. Congressmen point out the folly of buying oil for storage at its current highest-ever price, but the President talks about protecting America from a debilitating interruption in the supply of oil flowing into the country. As with the gas tax rhubarb, this is a tempest in a teapot. 70,000 barrels per day ”amounts to just 0.1% of global daily oil consumption,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Halting deliveries to the oil reserve would have less impact on pump prices than a flea bite on an elephant’s behind. And, sooner or later we’ll resume deposits to the oil reserve and still lack meaningful energy reforms.
For decades, the biggest barrier to increased energy production has been environmentalists. Becoming a potent force in the 1970s, the green folk have been amazingly successful opponents of hydro-electric dams, coal and nuclear-powered energy plants, oil refineries, off-shore drilling, and just about any other effort to increase America’s supply of energy. For instance, just one month ago the LA Times reported “Every time a new coal-fired power plant is proposed anywhere in the United States, a lawyer from the Sierra Club or an allied environmental group is assigned to stop it, by any bureaucratic or legal means necessary.” A Sierra Club spokesperson claimed responsibility for stopping the construction of 65 plants nationwide. Of course, blocking new power projects is not as important as closing the oldest, dirtiest, least efficient coal plants. “We’ll need to find a way to go after them, too,” said a Denver-based environmental attorney. If you think such chicanery doesn’t lead to higher energy costs, I have a bridge for sale, rarely used…
The favorite target of environmentalists is oil. Their motto should be, “Oil, bad for everybody.” “Alaska Native and environmental groups sued Monday [May 5, 2008] to stop exploration by oil companies this summer in Arctic waters frequented by whales, seals and other marine species,” reported the Press-Enterprise. Whether this stuporous effort will be successful is anyone’s guess, but Alaskan and continental shelf repositories hold enormous amounts of crude, most of it off-limits to oil companies thanks to our green antagonists. In a recent interview with Cal Thomas, Chevron vice chairman Peter Robertson said “there would be plenty of oil available to the United States if the oil companies were allowed to get it: eighty-five percent of offshore oil is off-limits.” The amount of oil accessible to America is staggering, some 112 billion barrels according to government estimates, but much of it will never see the light of day.
Many Americans have forgotten that ANWR production was derailed in 1995 when President Clinton vetoed legislation authorizing exploration of the Alaskan wilderness. If ANWR was now on-line, “America would be receiving more than 1 million barrels a day domestically, all of it taken by better technology than existed more than 30 years ago,” wrote Cal Thomas. Back then, environmentalists warned the Alaskan pipeline would wipe out the caribou. “It didn’t,” says Thomas, “but the environmentalists are back with the same discredited arguments,” canards causing leftists the world over to swoon and prices for everyone to rise.
By far, America’s largest energy resource is the Green River Basin oil shale field straddling Colorado and Utah. It contains — are you sitting down? — “1.4 trillion barrels of kerogen, which can be processed into synthetic fuel,” according to the Press-Enterprise. Think of it this way: “12.5 ANWRs!” The Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana hold 4.1 billion barrels of crude. America has enough proven reserves of petroleum to power the country, at current consumption levels, for over 200 years. Not garnering enough of it to keep energy affordable as we transition to alternative fuels is a form of national insanity. Personally, I’m praying for $10 per gallon gasoline prices. Maybe that will wake us up.
Now President Bush is going to Saudi Arabia, hat in hand, to beg the Saudis to do something we refuse to do ourselves, produce more oil. It’s another dead-end way to deal with high energy prices. Beseeching the Saudis to sell us additional oil will enrich them further and, eventually, enslave us. Clearly, the current crop of politicians do not have what it takes to merely address the issues central to our energy problems.
Suddenly, Ron Paul is looking better.
