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Democrats Solve Oil Crisis!

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By JOHN REINIERS

In My Own Words

Published: May 28, 2008

"Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices..." Republicans "continue to give the American people empty rhetoric rather than join the Democrats who are working to lower gas prices now." So said Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on April 19, 2006.
Well, Democrats have been in charge of the House of Representatives for more than two years now, and the price of gas is a whopping $1.61 higher than it was when they took control of the House and Senate — a 58 percent increase!
What was their plan in 2006? It was to empower the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute oil companies engaged in price gouging and market manipulation. How would they prove this? By doing what they do best: Govern by subpoena.
They started by subpoenaing Republicans by the bucketful to investigate past "misdeeds," then shifted to steroid use in baseball, and finally got to "Big Oil" by grilling their CEO's as you read this. (More populist pandering to their base.) About all they can prove is these guys make hefty salaries, and that the problem is really supply and demand.
As to supply, over the years Democrats have effectively shut down U.S. oil companies from costly exploration by prohibiting offshore and ANWR drilling (Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge.) It is guesstimated that ANWR would yield maybe 1.5 million barrels per day and that the Gulf of Mexico has about 40 billion barrels in reserve. (China has a deal with Cuba and is already doing exploratory drilling off the Florida coast. Our oil companies cannot.) Democratic environmentalists hate oil refineries. They loathe coal: We have a 200-year supply. (China builds a new coal plant every three days.) They reject nuclear power.
And to top it all off, the House passed a bill to sue OPEC over oil prices and production. Talk about political pandering and arrogance. Democrats talk about Bush imperialism and yet they are writing laws to govern the rest of the world. We certainly do not have equity on our side. We want OPEC to increase their production, yet Democrats refuse to allow our companies to drill for oil in our own U.S.! Drill for oil anywhere but in our back yard. (My dislike of OPEC oil oligarchs is, that like Saddam Hussein, they siphon off all the profits for themselves. At least in the U. S. a substantial amount of oil company stock is owned by pension funds which share in the dividends.)
As to demand, oil guru T. Boone Pickens figures peak oil production to be at about 85 million barrels a day. Demand is at 87 million. China and India are becoming large consumers, with China alone doubling oil consumption during the past 10 years. The industrial revolution was a huge success because of the widespread use of fossil fuels. The rest of the world is now enjoying economic growth and prosperity because of its consumption of energy, which added to ours, is at a rate greater than it is being replaced.
We are probably right now in the midst of a major global energy paradigm shift because of energy consumption, which will require prodigious advances in science and technology. I believe this will happen. But success will also require experienced, extraordinary leadership both in the executive and legislative branches. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening. It'll be politics as usual.
So the Democrat's "commonsense plan" worked like a charm — if their goal was to raise the price of gas for the consumer. Their slavish devotion to the "Gore" theory of the cause of global warming has also prompted proposed legislation that will create a complicated system called emissions trading or "cap-and-trade," which will set caps on emissions and allows trading in resulting emission allowances as though they were securities.
This subject goes well beyond this column, but it has failed in Europe, and one can only imagine the political chicanery and cheating, as companies lobby for high limits in emission allowances. Most experts think that placing a price on carbon dioxide, either through this scheme or through a tax, will result in punitive costs to lower income families. In fact in March, Roy Innis, the chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, warned that Democrats were "Slowly destroying the energy system we have, and we are promoting an expensive, environmentally harmful illusory energy system that exists only in theory and environmental rhetoric ... We are harming our poorest families ... This must not and cannot continue."
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said it best: "All we need is two or three more years of not doing something stupid and the science will regain the debate instead of the political activists, and we'll have policies based on science and not emotion."
With the election season upon us, and with the odds favoring liberal Sen. Barack Obama, along with a majority Democratic House, and a filibuster bulletproof 60-plus seats in a Democratic Senate, we can be assured that they will do "something stupid." They will have total control of the country.

John Reiniers, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill.

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