Dems produce oil for economic skid

The News Virginian
Published: June 10, 2008

Thank heaven for Democrats. They promised change in gas prices when they took back Congress in 2006, and, by Jove, it happened. The change has been different than the one for which America hoped. The average price for a gallon of unleaded was $2.25 when Dems scored their sweeping election victories. By July, the price likely will be twice that.
Well.
This after House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi reached for a promise and produced an oxymoron, and as pockets later emptied, a sardonic chuckle. The new powers in the House, she at its pinnacle, would produce “a common-sense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices,” or so Pelosi said. The plan so far primarily has consisted of bewailing big-oil profits and shunning as if infectious anything resembling common sense.
Meanwhile, some intrepid folk are daring to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, a place where oil is abundant. This would figure to be a logical alternative to excessive reliance on the Middle East, where restrained oil production is fueling the meteoric rise in prices. The trouble for America is that China and Cuba are doing the drilling, 60 miles off U.S. shores, between Key West and Havana. This does not figure to benefit Americans much.
Recognizing the problem posed by insufficient supply, Sen. Chuck Schumer has demanded an increase in oil production by 1 billion barrels a day. America could do precisely this by drilling a tiny section of tundra in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The site of drilling would cover roughly 2,500 acres, or about twice the retail space for Waynesboro’s Town Center. The refuge covers 19.2 million acres, equivalent to more than two-thirds of Virginia. Something about specks in oceans applies here.
Of course, Schumer does not demand increasing production here, which would figure to be simpler than the alternative, but in Saudi Arabia, where the oil happens to be under the control of, well, the Saudis. The former option, which perhaps fits too comfortably under the category of common sense, is naturally off limits.
Fearing hazards to muskoxen and polar bears, President Clinton vetoed drilling in ANWR in 1995, setting in motion a trickling down of gas pain while benefiting politically from the fiscal successes of another president’s trickle-down economics. Schumer and 71 other senators, the two running for president among them, similarly favor relying on other countries’ oil resources rather than our own.
This approach also applies to drilling in the Gulf, where one of the worries is about the capacity of offshore oil rigs to endure the hurricanes that frequent the vicinity. Damage from a storm could spill the black stuff into the sea by the millions of gallons. Of course, the rigs already there weathered Katrina, a hurricane of Category 5 proportion while rumbling through the Gulf. Not one among hundreds of rigs leaked. Never mind.
Environmentalists insist that dependence on oil is the problem. If only solutions were as abundant as untapped American energy resources. What should we put in our vehicles, compact, SUV or otherwise, to make those lavish trips to and from work? Ethanol? Oh wait. Growing corn for that elixir chews up rain forests and deprives the starving Third World of food.
Taking care of the Earth is a noble and worthwhile ambition. But environmentalists in their real zeal, and politicians in their facsimile of it, forget that responsible drilling is no more oxymoronic than the idea of a “common-sense plan,” unless the latter has been altered to the point of gross distortion. Like the Reagan-era Soviet Union, saddled by a costly war, America is careening toward a financial crisis. We might soon wonder, having saved polar bears, what might we now do to save ourselves?