The Reality Is, We Need Oil

by Jason Bradley

The cry for America to wean itself off foreign oil is well founded. After all, we get our oil from a backward region of the world where anti-Americanism is institutional and academic. Since America possesses an abundance of natural resources, with real potential for a boom in energy production, those cries strongly resonate. A current estimate of natural gas in America is 2,047 trillion cubic feet. That is enough to power our nation for the next 100 years.

A study by the Congressional Research Service claimed that America’s supply of recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal is the largest on the planet. Furthermore, we have the ability to tap into an estimated 165 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Even with the current rate of consumption, our supply of oil is enough to fuel the country for at least the next 75 years. Even if we currently lack the infrastructure, the potential exists. And with the injection of revenue and capital investments from a nation as rich as ours, industry technology and innovation would increase likely lowering prices on extraction and production.

The powers that be, however, have a different view of these potentials. It is not a misunderstanding or differing arithmetic. Rather, it is ideologically and politically motivated. Democrats continuously marginalize America’s potential for domestic energy production. Their law makers, with the help of Obama’s pen and rhetoric, have declared war on energy. They chose to tax “Big Oil”, limit oil production and exploration, revoke leases for inland production and financially backbreaking businesses to drill on federally owned land. Democrats decry record profits made by the oil industries as evil and mislead the country to believe they are only leveling the playing field between consumer and producer. In actuality, the Earth-Democrats are engineering a sinister plan for blowback. A person who possesses even an elementary understanding of macroeconomics would know these added costs will simply be passed on to the consumer. Since the days of horse and carriage are long gone, and Americans still rely on oil and gas to commute and move produce across a country roughly the size of Europe, the market will survive out of necessity. That is until taxes on gas and mileage go up. The word is sabotage.

Ironically, these designs being crafted by Democrats and their power-circles are not being done to push American consumption and production inwards in the form of a tariff. It is all in the effort to force Americans into a product — unproven and unrealistic electric-hybrid cars — they do not want and will not buy when left to their own desires. By using American tax payers as pawns to wreck the oil industry, the Democrats will be able to create a new Green-unionized labor workforce that will carry us into a glorious second, Green-Industrial Revolution. Presumably, these noble workers will be able to construct energy efficient castles in the sky out of wind and solar power and subsidies.

The world, let alone America, can ill afford to become economically weaker which will certainly come to pass should these liberal visions be carried out. It is true America has a robust appetite for oil. We manage to consume 25 percent of the world’s oil production, while making up only 5 percent of the world’s total population. However, add the fact that American manufacturing produces over 25 percent of the world’s output, and we are far from the gluttonous consumer-only sloths the liberals constantly promote. Contrary to that strongly held belief, America still produces and presides over a potent and ever expanding manufacturing market. In fact, we have the most productive workers on the planet, the strongest economy, the most powerful military, and also manage to be the most scientifically advanced country in the world. In America each worker produces over $180,000 annually in manufactured goods. Our American workforce and productivity continues to tick upwards despite losing over 7 million jobs since 1970.

If Democrats are left to their desires, America will soon resemble Spain. Its government forced green jobs onto the economy and the result was for every one green job created, the private sector lost two.  Spain’s green industry caused energy prices to skyrocket and businesses found it too expensive to produce. The added costs were passed to the consumer and the economy naturally contracted. The result is an unemployment rate at 20 percent and political paralysis.

Spain was once deemed the leader in green jobs. Now they are the leader of unemployment in the EU. Reality must trump ideology. The fate of America depends on it.


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Posted May 27th 2011 at 4:42 am in Economics, Featured Story, Politics, energy | 200 Comments