PELOSI ON ENERGY
Background:
It is a matter of record that the United States Congress, in 1980, decreed a moratorium on offshore drilling for oil and gas. As this prohibition was also mandated by a separate presidential directive issued by George H.W. Bush, the politicians were isolating the United States from potential sources of energy despite the fact that they were spending billions of dollars on the US Department of Energy every year – an agency with the mandate, at the time of its creation, to free the United States from dependence on foreign oil. This seemingly illogical behavior arose from an attempt to avoid more incidents of severe environmental damage from drilling operations – in particular the as-much-as 3 million gallon Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969.
Of course the technology to safely drill had already improved immensely, but a techno-illiterate Congress was more driven by fear than by fact. Over the 40 years since that incident, only 850 barrels of oil have been released into the marine environment from offshore drilling and pumping. As of today, natural (i.e., unrelated to human activity) seepage from the earth introduces more oil into the marine environment than human drilling and oil extraction.
As speculators sent the price of oil from the $40 per barrel range to more than $140 per barrel in 2008, and as the United States was importing 70% of the oil it used despite the documented mandate of the Department of Energy, the USA was sending up to $700 Billion a year to nations such as Saudi Arabia, which supports the terrorist organization Al Quaida; Venezuela, which supports FARQ terrorists in Columbia; and other ‘unfriendly nations’ such as Iran, which dirties its hands by sponsoring anti-Israel terrorist organizations such as Hamas . The price of gasoline quickly exceeded $4 per gallon, which immediately affected citizens’ disposable incomes and increased the cost of doing business. To add insult to injury, the President asked the oil-supplying nations (OPEC) to help ease the cost of oil by increasing production. They not only told us to pound salt, but they reduced their production! This combination promised a reduction of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and inflation at the same time.
Recognizing both the problem and the environmentally safe state of the art in drilling technology forty years after Santa Barbara, President George W. Bush decided he knew more than the eco-terrorists, and he bravely, at great political risk, rescinded his father’s presidential order. The price of crude oil immediately dropped by $10 per barrel, so the president then requested the democratic Congress to take similar action. A drilling bill, if passed by Congress, would likely have another benefit: the further reduction in the price of oil simply by introducing the element of risk to the out-of-control oil speculators.
Senselessness
Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed her ideology and hatred of George W. Bush to rule over rationality. She forcefully rejected the President’s request – even as Barack Obama (ahead in the polls, but not yet officially president) said he might be open to some drilling.
