North Star Writers Group

On Monday, British Petroleum announced that it would have to shut down its oil production facilities in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in order to repair a corroded line than had begun leaking crude. As a result, the world markets – already skittish over instability in the Middle East and hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico – reacted by raising the price of oil by two dollars a barrel, to $78. And right on schedule, the usual suspects yet again start spewing their ignorant bilge about "price gouging" and "alternative fuels." Why are they so unable to see the obvious and simple truth right in front of their faces?

Oil prices are high because supply is tight – so much so that even the tiniest disruption in those supply lines causes the whole system to be in danger of collapse. When you have a limited number of actively producing oil fields and no spare refinery capacity at all, the loss of any small part of that system is magnified and made far more critical than it ever needed to be.

Notice that I didn't say supply is low. That's because it isn't. Between the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (10.4 billion barrels), the Gulf of Mexico (4.6 billion) and estimated large deposits off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, there is plenty of crude oil available inside American territory--enough to supply all of our oil needs and demands for decades to come. ANWR alone would have been enough to render the BP Prudhoe Bay shutdown an unnoticed irrelevancy to everyone but BP and their stockholders, were it up and running.

So why haven't we tapped those supplies? Because the energy-hating radical environmentalist lobby and the Democrat politicians they control like a puppetmaster controls marionettes won't let anyone retrieve them. And their liberal allies in the propagandist media help the cause by smearing and demagoguing oil companies while burying the facts. Those facts are as follows:

• There is plenty of crude oil available, both in US territory and worldwide, if only we weren't being blocked from obtaining it. And a resource isn't a resource unless it gets used.

• Oil production in the US peaked in the late 1970s. No new fields have been drilled and no new refineries have been built since. In fact, there are actually fewer refineries now as the oil companies shuttered some in the late 1990s when oil was plentiful, thus dirt-cheap, and they weren't profitable to keep running. And now that they're needed, these refineries and fields cannot be returned to operation, even with what Hurricane Katrina did to expose how critically needed they are.

• It is virtually impossible to begin any new oil wells or refineries, thanks to the endless restrictions and regulations passed by liberal politicians at the behest of the environmentalist wacko lobby. No company has the time or money to jump through all those silly hoops. (Which, ironically, suits the existing big oil companies just fine since they'll never have any new competition to worry about - competition that would help to bring prices down, as it always does.)

• The cumulative effect of the above is to needlessly and severely constrict supply throughout the entire system. Low supply combined with steadily increasing demand equals high prices. (Not that the liberals decrying this will ever admit that they are largely responsible for causing it. Perhaps they're too busy counting their 30 percent cut of the profits, taken via the corporate income tax from the oil companies. Do I hear the phrase "tax gouging" entering the lexicon?)

• The two ways to solve the above are to increase supply or decrease demand. Since, by definition, you cannot conserve your way out of a shortage (in other words, there's only so far you can stretch an already limited amount), that only leaves increasing supply as a solution in the near future (i.e. the next 50 years). And since we have plenty available within our own territory, there you go.

• "Alternative fuels" are a total pipe-dream for right now. Ethanol actually consumes more energy to produce from corn than gasoline from crude oil, is very difficult (and thus expensive) to transport and would cost quite a bit more per gallon than gasoline if not so heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Why is it so heavily subsidized in spite of it all? Because incumbent congressmen and senators get re-elected by verbally sucking up to farmers (and blasting anyone who dares to tell the truth as a farmer-hater) while shoveling money at agricultural companies like Archer-Daniels-Midland, who return a large share of it in campaign contributions. So politicians not only block us from obtaining our own oil, they also make us subsidize an expensive boondoggle on top of it. (Though I'd gladly give them their ethanol if they'd just give us some more oil and refineries in return.)

• If the whole hybrid engine/electric car phenomenon is ever to take off on a wide scale, a massive upgrade of the nation's electrical grid and many new power plants will be needed. (You can probably guess the environmentalists' position on that one.) There are already rolling blackouts in California and New York every time the summer temperature nears 100 degrees and everyone turns on their air conditioners. And now we're supposed to add the electrical consumption of millions of vehicles on top of that? Shyeah, right. We need to build more nuclear power plants (which also stopped in the 1970s), both to accommodate increased demand (with or without that coming fleet of electric cars) and to replace older, dirtier coal and natural gas fired plants. But just as with oil refineries, this is all but impossible to accomplish thanks to endless regulatory hurdles. (Heck, the envirowackos react to the phrase "nuclear power" about as well as Dracula does to crucifixes and sunlight.)

Beyond the above, there is one huge political reason to dramatically increase domestic oil

supply - so that we no longer have to depend on a monopoly made up mostly of America-hating evil-thug dictators out to perpetually blackmail us and potentially route the proceeds to our enemies. Having a sufficient domestic supply of energy resources and the infrastructure to handle all contingencies from human error to natural disaster without major interruption is a national security imperative. And those who stand in the way of it – from the Sierra Club and Greenpeace to the Democrat senators who instantly filibuster ANWR drilling bills upon their orders, to a media that blatantly propagandizes for them – need to be exposed once and for all as the seditionists they are. (Sadly, though, seeing how quick the GOP has been to imitate liberals in an election year, I'm not getting my hopes up.)

Oh, and one last fact: The caribou population in Prudhoe Bay has grown fivefold since oil production began there 30 years ago. So the next time you hear an environmentalist (or just your average, garden-variety ignorant liberal) worrying about what ANWR drilling will do to Bambi and his brethren, know that this person is simply full of their droppings.

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