The Fuel Mess

I am so tired of the politicians, the media, and the left telling us how to deal with $4.00 a gallon gasoline. Increasing oil production overseas or even domestically won't bring the price of a gallon of gasoline down. Furthermore, this fabled ethanol solution has exascerbated the problem because of dramatically decreased fuel economy and artificially inflated grain costs. So I'm going to tell you how we get that gallon of gasoline back down to a reasonable level.

First, tell the Arabs that live in that wasteland to eat that oil. The US supplies nearly all of the Arabian Peninsula's food supply and, thanks to Mother Nature, America's breadbasket isn't going have enough to go around. We need to look out for number one and that means that if we don't export any crops overseas to make sure that Americans don't go hungry, then so be it. Arabs don't produce any of their own food but they do produce oil. Surely, we can find some middle ground that is beneficial and economical to both sides, favoring the US.

Second, start building refineries here in the US. Even if all of OPEC was pumping at capacity, we don't have the refining capacity to keep up with today's gasoline demands. This isn't rocket science - the bottleneck in this entire process is the lack of refining capacity. We need to eliminate that bottleneck now by clearing all of the regulatory hurdles that make building refineries impossible. There are many abandoned military installations, closed by BRAC, that could be used for refinery sites. We need to build EXCESS refining capacity so that the next generation doesn't suffer the consequences that we are currently suffering as a result of the hippie generation. Just because it will take at least a decade for the refineries to make a difference shouldn't be a deterent. Ten years from now, we'll be glad we did it. We should have started ten years ago!

Third, start building nuclear power plants in the US. You want to get us off of fossil fuels - nuclear power is the answer until somebody comes up with something better and cleaner. Do it the same way I described above - put the new plants on the facilities vacated by the BRAC. Nuclear power is clean and it works. Again, we should've done this ten years ago but we got to start sometime - do it today.

Fourth, stop producing ethanol. Ethanol decreases gas mileage so significantly that any savings that could have been realized are lost because of the frequency at which we must refuel. Furthermore, it costs more to produce ethanol than regular gas and because of crop futures speculation and media hype, the cost of the renewable portion, the grain crops, have skyrocketed and kept fuel costs high and added higher food costs to the mix.

Fifth, start drilling here in the US. But do it differently than it has been in the past. Don't sell the drilling rights to the oil company for a dollar a barrel and then let the oil company sell the oil on the open market for the going price. That oil under our soil belongs to the people of this nation. Why should the oil company solely profit from it? We should allow the oil companies to bid on pumping it out for us, meaning that the people retain the mineral rights and the government, acting on our behalf, awards the drilling contract to the LOWEST BIDDER. That crude would still belong to the US and be refined and consumed solely by the US. Think of how much a barrel of oil would cost if the oil companies were actually competing to drill it. Think of how much we'd save if the oil didn't have to be sold on the open market and shipped halfway around the world. It's our oil - why should it ever leave here? Under this plan, oil extracted from the US would cost the consumer only the expense of the drilling contract, the expense of refining it, and the cost of delivering it to the pump (plus the state and federal taxes but we're paying that already.)

Last, stop printing money. The single most detrimental thing our politicians have done is print more money, grossly devaluing the dollar and driving up the price per barrel of oil. Conservative fiscal policy is necessary to regain control of oil prices. This means that big government programs are going to have to be cut. We are at war so the defense budget cannot be cut but there are plenty of social programs that can be.

I don't have a problem with trading with other nations but I do have a problem with the way we do it today. We always seem to get the short end of the stick. It's time for us to adopt an "us first" mentality. The rest of the world hates us anyway but it has always been that way since we are at the top of the global food chain. If we are to maintain our position as top dog on this planet, we had better start doing something to protect that position. Clearing up the energy problem is the first step.