Uphill Battle
Elizabeth Ames Jones, a former chairman (and still current member) of the Texas Railroad Commission is arguing against the energy bill that the House has passed. She makes perfect sense and is therefore facing a real uphill struggle. She points out that the bill would be a disaster for this country.
Americans burn 490 million gallons of gasoline and diesel every day and import 65 percent of the oil used to make those products. Worldwide energy consumption is expected to increase 40 percent in the next 25 years, and widespread adoption of alternative energy sources is decades away. Because America will need to rely on energy that comes from natural gas and oil for the foreseeable future, the energy legislation pending in Congress could be disastrous for our country.
If this legislation is finalized and sent to President Bush as the House passed it, it could hurt, not help, America by building barriers to production of domestic energy supplies. In the face of expanding global demand for energy, this legislation defies logic.
America's undeveloped oil and gas resources should be considered our generation's victory garden in the face of today's struggle to maintain energy security. Innovative technology is bringing on line oil and gas production from heretofore noncommercial and unconventional geological reservoirs. Such technology is on the verge of unleashing vast new supplies of oil and gas.
It stands to reason that a rational and responsible federal government would craft energy policies that nurture the growth and development of this exciting potential energy supply. Yet Congress is slamming the door on development of large domestic reserves of hydrocarbons.
As she points out, new techniques have drastically reduced the footprint and the environmental impact of drilling operations. But she's going against a "do something right now" mindset in Washington that always delivers badly thought out and ultimately counterproductive legislation. Washington has a long history of disastrous energy legislation. That is unlikely to change anytime soon.
By feeblemind, Tuesday, 9 October , 2007 @ 7:28 am
I was reading a Canadian blog yesterday that said that Alberta was going to jack the oil royalties on oil extracted from shale to the point where it won’t be worth the effort to recover the oil. Politicians’ ignorance of markets and the need for profits is simply mind boggling.