Who's Got Gas???

If you are like the rest of us, you have probably noticed that your gas dollar isn't going quite as far as it used to. Yes, while our Congress talks in circles and interrogates athletes, We The People are getting fleeced at the pumps. Why is this happening? And even more importantly, is there anything anyone can do about it?

The easy answer to this, and the one that is touted by a great deal of conservatives is the opening of ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in Alaska. "Open ANWR!" they shout as though this simple step would solve all of our problems. Although I hate to rain on anyone's parade, especially another conservative's, this is just the first step to fixing our Persian Gulf sized problem.

But, so as not to tackle too much at once, let's discuss ANWR. I, for one, am all for drilling in ANWR. First of all, if ANWR was the size of a tennis court, the drilling area would be about the size of a newspaper placed in one of the corners. We are not talking about a large tract of land, and in fact, I would be willing to bet that the porcupine caribou will not even miss it. If you look at the other areas in Alaska where drilling is taking place, you might even conclude that the sacred porcupine caribou, which apparently are held so dear in hearts of environmentalists, even like the company of the oil workers. Caribou populations have actually grown significantly in the areas where the drilling is taking place. And if this weren't enough, the Native American tribes, Guardians of the Land if you will, are all for this as well.

"So Carl," you are probably saying,"We will drill in ANWR, get all that great oil, and then be right back to paying $1.06 a gallon in no time, right?" Not so fast, my gas-guzzling goomba. In the United States there has not been a new oil refinery constructed in 25 years. The oil is no good to us unless we can refine it, and right now we can't. Our Federal Government has seen to that by jacking up environmental regulations on refineries to the point where it has become unprofitable for companies to refine oil in the US. So what we have now is a situation where even if we pump more oil out of the ground, we couldn't do anything with it, and so it wouldn't effect our gas prices at all. Think of it like putting liquid through a funnel. You can pour all the liquid you want into the funnel, but only so much is going to come out the other end, unless you make the output bigger, or in our case, increase our refining capacity. In order to accomplish that, our President needs to ease regulations that increase the cost of constructing new refineries, and once again make it profitable to refine oil in the good ol' U.S.A.

"So there we go, right? Open ANWR, ease regulation, and pay $1.06 a gallon, right?" Again, it isn't going to be that easy. We have made our bed by becoming such "enthusiastic" consumers, and now we have to sleep in it. Pumping oil out of ANWR and refining it will certainly help, but in the end it all is going to come down to supply and demand. The United States uses about 18 million barrels of oil each day, and the projected output of new ANWR wells is only about a million barrels a day. That is only about a 6% increase in supply; not enough to drastically effect the price, but certainly enough to help. The problem is that demand is growing much faster than supply. Between population growth and the increase of urban sprawl, the demand for gasoline is out-pacing the supply. In a situation such as this, the gains realized by drilling in ANWR would soon be swallowed up by ever-growing demand.

"So Carl, are you saying that I should just resign myself to paying higher and higher fuel prices??" Absolutely not!! We would not be where we are as Americans if we laid down that easily. There is a very simple way to save ourselves from this self-induced fuel folly, and it too comes down to supply and demand. In the short-term, we need to combat rising fuel costs by increasing supply; drilling in ANWR coupled with increased refining capacity would HELP to accomplish that. In the long-term, we need to reduce demand. In this, technology needs to be our savior. Americans are among the most technologically advanced people in the world, and you mean to tell me that we can't build a car that runs on something other than gasoline? And actually, we all know the answer to that, because we have all seen the prototypes for cars powered by everything from electricity to methane.

We have the technology, and the prototypes, so why don't we have the products? There's no money in it. There are a lot of people making a lot of money from the status quo, and at the risk of sounding liberal, I think that needs to change. The government needs to begin handing out some real money, in the form of tax breaks or incentives, to companies that design and produce cars that run without fossil fuels. For bad or good, if Americans have proven one thing to the rest of the world, it is that money gets things done.

So, if you are still with me after all that, congratulations, and thank you for sticking it out. Hopefully the right person will read this, and maybe something will get done. In the meantime, I'll just literally suck it up, and pay $2.35 a gallon with everyone else. If it makes you feel any better, they are paying $6 a gallon in England.

Then again, all of that is just my opinion. What do you think?