Jim's Pond - Exploring the Universe of Ideas
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Saturday, April 3, 2004

Oil Prices

The month after I got my driver's license gas prices went from 33 cents to 65 cents. That was a tramatic experience for a young lad making $1.60 an hour driving a an old Ford truck that got around 10 miles to the gallon (and burned plenty of oil, too.)

One of my new in-laws, I'll refer to him as Von, works at a local Utah refinery. Von and I have had a few discussions over the past months about gas production. And within the past year his parent company has decided to either greatly improve production, sell the refinery or close it down. Causing a tremendous amount of financial concern for the in-laws. But it doesn't end there.

Von thinks that refinery days in the United States are numbered. It's much less costly for oil companies to build off shore plants, refine the oil there, and send it into our country via tanker. So, between environmental groups, government regulation, cost of refining, cost of crude and shipping prices, it doesn't seem too far out of the realms of possibility that in the next 5 or so years the days of US oil production will end. Couple that with our insatiable appetite for foreign oil, terrorist designs on making our lives miserable and the very fact that our economy is fueled on oil and its byproducts and we are witness to a recipe for disaster of galactic proportions.

So I find it fascinating when one prominent member of a major political party stands up and blames a prominent member of another political party for creating high gas prices. Further adding to my enjoyment is when this said prominent politician states that if we put him into office he will solve the gas price problem. Makes one wonder how. Especially since powerful constituents of this prominent party are standing firmly in the way of no new drilling for oil and no new refineries.

How refreshing would it be for this politician to stand up and speak the truth? How about this for starters? "Our party supports no new drilling and no new refineries. It is okay if gas prices balloon to even higher and higher levels. Perhaps that will finally get us to move away from foreign oil and to new and better alternative fuels. We should all learn to live with the higher prices that will inevitably result from our policies."

At least this approach would be honest. Instead, all we get is a lot of hot gas...........
10:34:31 PM    comment []






© 2005 Jim Stewart
Last Update: 2/8/05; 4:53:17 PM

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