Posted by
theoilpatchplug on Thursday, February 21, 2008 8:55:54 AM
Energy: A refinery burns in Texas while politicians fiddle in Washington. As oil goes over $100 a barrel, we don't have to worry about Hugo Chavez restricting supply. We have the Democrats in Congress to do that.
Suppose you had a ton of money sitting in your bank account but you decided to max out your credit cards anyway. That's the energy policy of the United States as fashioned by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
At these prices, we have a trillion dollars worth of oil sitting under a section of frozen tundra the size of Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C. We could go get it. Instead we prefer to shovel billions of our dollars to thugs like Chavez while the same politicians who lock up our domestic energy praise him when he offers "cheap" home heating oil to states in the Northeast.
Chavez has said he's changed his mind about cutting off supplies to the U.S., but it's because he'd have a hard time selling Venezuela's heavy crude — which requires special refining — anywhere else. He's not doing us any favors. Unfortunately, neither is the U.S. Senate.
Oil futures closed above $100 for the first time Tuesday after Monday's explosion at Alon USA's refinery in Big Spring, Texas. It could be shuttered for two months. Yet NIMBYs won't let new refineries be built, and the greenies won't let the domestic oil be refined.
The heads-in-the-tundra crowd is led by Hillary Clinton. She has voted no fewer than nine times to block drilling in a tiny, frozen part of ANWR. Her husband first blocked ANWR development in 1995. After Hurricane Katrina disabled offshore oil platforms, revealing our energy vulnerability, Mrs. Clinton said: "It makes no sense to respond to a disaster in the Gulf by making a disaster in Alaska."
Never mind that the caribou and other critters have thrived despite drilling in Prudhoe Bay, which recently delivered its 15 billionth barrel of oil through the Alaska pipeline. Oil from ANWR could meet all of New York's petroleum needs for 34 years, yet the state's junior senator opposes getting it.
"ANWR would supply every drop of petroleum for Florida for 29 years," said former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, "New York for 34 years, California for 16 years or New Hampshire for 315 years." It could also supply Washington, D.C., a place where there's no shortage of hot air, for 1,710 years.
In 2005, the Senate voted twice by narrow margins on amendments authorizing ANWR drilling to a budget resolution bill (March 16) and a budget reconciliation bill (Nov. 3). Forty-one Democrats voted against both. Twenty-three of them were around to have voted against ANWR in 1995.
Barack Obama, who has voted twice against drilling in ANWR, has noted that a "large portion of the $800 million we spend on foreign oil every day goes to some of the world's most volatile regimes." Still, he says that "we cannot drill our way out of the problem." Call this the audacity of helplessness.
In his book "The Audacity of Hope," Obama writes: "Instead of subsidizing the oil industry, we should end every single tax break the industry currently receives and demand that 1% of the revenues from oil companies with over $1 billion in quarterly profits go toward financing alternative energy research and infrastructure."
Yet he'd subsidize the ethanol industry, which contributes to rising food prices and hurts the environment through increased agricultural runoff. He would feed the world, but he'd have us put ears of corn in our cars.
We are not against alternative energy. America is going to need all the energy it can produce — from all sources. We just don't like leaving energy in the ground.
The Democrats promise hope and change. Let's hope we develop our domestic energy sources, starting with ANWR. Now that would be a real change.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT