by Tina Grazier
Energy prices have only begun to cause heartburn in the Heartland. We can wring our hands, cry in our beers, and place blame, orwe can do something about it.
The American people love and respect the great outdoors. We have shown our desire to preserve and care for the beauty around us. We are in support of the demand for better sources of energy and transportation. We do so because it makes sense. BUTcreating big government bureaucracies to tax and regulate business into the ground will not help us transition. Instead it will create huge roadblocks. Long term solutions are being worked on by many of those folks who love to put on their lab coats but invention doesnt happen at the wave of a wand. We need transitional answers to fill the gap and solve our current problem. The solution to our short-term energy problem (and the stability in the economy) is drilling for black gold, Texas teaand the sooner the better.
Thankfully the Leiberman/Warner cap and trade bill that is currently making its way through Congress will probably not become law this year. This legislation is, in the words of Ben Leiberman of the Heritage Foundation, costly proposition that would impose rationing of coal, oil, and natural gas and likely increase energy costs and do considerably more economic harm than environmental good.” Solutions from Congress represent roadblocks to a bright future in terms of clean low cost energy for Americans and energy/emvironment fixers in Congress must be defeated. They mean well, I suppose, but they dont seem to get the negative effects of their meddling.
Prices at the gas pump have caused a tremendous downturn in the pursuit of happiness for nearly all Americans, but we need to remember that our frowns and grumblings are being noticed. Theyre being noticed by people who actually have the power to DO something about it:
Dakota Oil Fields of Saudi-Sized Reserves Make Farmers Drillers, by Anthony Effinger
June 3 (Bloomberg) — John Bartelson, who smokes Marlboro Lights through fingers blackened with tractor grease, may look like an average wheat farmer. He isn’t. He’s one of North Dakota’s new oil barons. ** Every month, he gets a check for tens of thousands of dollars from a company in Houston called EOG Resources Inc., which drilled two oil wells on his land last year. He says the day his first royalty check arrived was one to remember. ** “I smiled to beat hell, and I went to town and had a beer,” Bartelson, 65, says. ** His new wealth springs from the Bakken formation, a sprawling deposit of high-quality crude beneath the durum wheat fields of North Dakota, Montana and southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Bakken may give the U.S. — the world’s biggest importer of oil — a new domestic energy source at a time when demand from China and India is ratcheting up the global competition for supplies and propelling average U.S. gasoline prices to almost $4 a gallon. ** And unlike the tar from Canada’s oil sands, Bakken crude needs little refining. Swirl some of it in a Mason jar and it leaves a thin, honey-colored film along the sides. It’s light – -almost like gasoline — and sweet, meaning it’s low in sulfur. ** Best of all, the Bakken could be huge. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Leigh Price, a Denver geochemist who died of a heart attack in 2000, estimated that the Bakken might hold a whopping 413 billion barrels. If so, it would dwarf Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar, the world’s biggest field, which has produced about 55 billion barrels.
The Bakken field is a somewhat limited source (for now) but it can help, forgive the phrase, ease our pain. Sure that feller in North Dakota will make himself a bundle but I, for one, wont mind his profits one bit if the cost of filling cars, heating and cooling homes, and producing the products we use every day is reasonable.
There are many other sources that will free us from dependence on foreign sources and high prices. All it takes is the political fortitude to get er done. Your voice matters, as does your vote. Keep frowning at the pumps to create that magic motivator: need. Make your votes count…and demand more drilling NOW!