Can't Drill It Into Them

No blood for oil? Okay. How about food? Is anyone willing to fight for that? A gallon of milk is going up about as fast as a gallon of gasoline. Rice is going up too and so is corn. Why? Simple. It’s Economics 101: Supply is down and demand is up for both oil and for food, and now we’re using grain for biofuel instead of food and our federal tax dollars are subsidizing it. China and India are developing quickly, eating more, and buying more fuel. Supplies haven’t been going up to keep pace. The result? Higher prices. This isn’t rocket science.

Why haven’t supplies been going up? Congress won’t allow more drilling. They want to protect wildlife in Alaska (mosquitoes mostly) and along our coastlines. Animal lovers and their Democrat patrons are still traumatized by memories of sea birds coated with oil after the Exxon Valdez spill and nothing could be worse for them than a repeat of that. So, no drilling in ANWR. Local governments won’t allow construction of more refineries to produce gasoline and heating oil. Ted Kennedy won’t allow any windmills near Nantucket and nuclear power plants are not even discussed.

So we buy foreign oil. As the price of that goes up, more of our money goes to real or potential enemies like Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. We get weaker and they get stronger. But hey, we’re preserving mosquito habitat in Alaska and shark habitat in the Gulf, right? Soaring fuel prices get Americans to think about walking, riding bicycles and taking the train more, right? Carbon emissions are going down and Al Gore likes that, right?

After the Arab Oil Embargo thirty-five years ago, fuel prices soared. That was the kind of warning some forty-year-old guys get when they have a mild heart attack. The smart ones realize they better stop smoking, start exercising, and change their eating habits. The dumb ones ignore the warning and die of a big one by fifty. Our federal government ignored our early oil warning in the seventies and we’re still not ready to handle rising prices thirty-five years hence.

And it’s not just Democrats. Republicans have been in control of the White House and Congress a few times since then and they’ve done next to nothing about national energy policy either. It’s been nearly seven years since September 11th and still nothing from our alleged leaders in Washington. Doesn’t look like it’s going to change in the foreseeable future either. Obama doesn’t support drilling ANWR and even John McCain said he wouldn’t allow it either. It’s maddening.

Monday night, Maine’s First District congressional candidates debated at the Magic Lantern Theater in Bridgton. The primary isn’t until next week but Democrats and Republicans were on the same stage answering questions - pretty unusual. Judging from audience reaction, rising fuel prices were foremost in people’s minds. When asked about what they would do about them, the Democrat candidates offered the same old pap about alternative energy sources and conservation. They went on about wind, geothermal, hydro, solar and tidal energy, government-mandated miles-per-gallon limits, excess-profits taxes on oil companies - the same stuff we’ve been hearing for decades.

Republican candidate Dean Scontras pointed out that our our tax dollars are wasted on federal subsidies for biofuels. “It takes two gallons of gasoline to produce one gallon of ethanol,” he said. “There’s 86 billion barrels of oil off our coast and Congress says we can’t go out there [and drill]. All these alternative energy sources are great, but oil is going to be $200 a barrel by the end of the year. Those alternative sources aren’t going to reduce the cost to heat your home anytime soon. I’m for lifting the restrictions on drilling off our coasts, in North and South Dakota, in Alaska - increasing supplies so our prices go down. That’s how the market works. We haven’t built a refinery in this country in twenty-five years because of all the regulation required to construct one. Twenty-five years! That’s outrageous.” He added that the Chinese, the Cubans and the Canadians are drilling off our coasts, but we can’t. That answer brought - by far - the biggest applause of the night.

As I left the theater, I didn’t see anybody getting on a bicycle. On the way home, I didn’t see any windmills or solar panels either. I did see numbers outside gas stations advertising gas prices approaching $4 per gallon though. I saw lots of those.