Today the Heritage Foundation in its The Foundry section posted an article about the rising cost of gasoline in America. The article pointed out that although the unrest in Libya has some impact on the cost of oil (which went over $100 a barrel today), the upward trend in price is largely due to the increased demand for oil around the world.
The article reports:
"...long before the recent protests even began, analysts were predicting $4 a gallon by this summer and $5 a gallon by 2012. Anyone could have predicted that the recovering world economy, coupled with the continued growth of India and China, was going to push oil prices higher. So if an Administration wanted to keep gas prices down, they could have mitigated increased oil demand by increasing domestic oil production. But that is not what the Obama Administration has done. Instead of increasing domestic oil supplies, the Obama Administration has cut them at every opportunity, and Americans are now suffering because of those choices."
In February, as the unrest in Egypt was unfolding, Energy Secretary Steven Chu was asked what the Obama Administration could do to control the rising price of oil, his reply, "The best way America can protect itself against these incidents is to decrease our dependency on foreign oil, in fact to diversify our supply." The question then becomes what he meant by the phrase 'diversify our supply.' The Obama Administration's definition of a diverse energy supply is corn, wind, solar, and electric cars. Some of these ideas may be practical in the future, but as of right now, when we need a diverse energy supply, they will not do the job.
The article points out:
"The major source of biomass production, corn-based ethanol, produces less energy per unit volume than gasoline, contributes to food price increases, costs taxpayers $4 billion to produce 2 percent of the total gasoline supply, and has dubious environmental effects. The electric cars the Obama Administration has invested in are prohibitively costly, do not fit the needs of the American consumer, and are also environmentally suspect. The other sources of energy the Obama Administration is subsidizing and promoting--wind and solar--not only make up a minuscule 1 percent of America's electricity generation but are entirely irrelevant to gasoline supply in the transportation sector."
The policies of the Obama Administration have not allowed America to develop its carbon-based energy sources. Until this week, no drilling permits had been issued in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP spill (meanwhile President Obama supports offshore drilling for Brazil - see Wall Street Journal article of August 18, 2009). Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah in his first month in office. Last fall, Secretary Salazar announced that the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast, and the Pacific coast will not be developed, effectively banning drilling in those areas for the next seven years.
America has the resouces and the ability to have a thriving economy. One of the current drags on the economy is the high price of gasoline. Developing our own natural resources would employ Americans, end our dependency on foreign oil, and fuel our economy. It's unfortunate that this Administration is unwilling to do that.
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