Common Sense University

              It is not even seven years since the fatal day of September 11, 2001 when nearly three thousand innocent people lost their lives as a result of the Al Qaida attacks in New York City, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania where a hijacked airplane crashed and yet we appear to have a new devil, an even greater enemy in this country: OIL!

            We have to concede that it sounds somewhat exaggerated but it is true. All you hear and read about these days is how bad oil is for mankind and the only answer is its elimination. Nobody seems concerned about Osama Bin Laden and his fellow terrorists or Al Qaida in general, that is apparently nothing more than a sad memory. But oil is now the element that could cause mankind to go extinct in this century and has therefore to be considered a much greater evil to all of us than a couple of terrorists.

            This entire focus on oil has become stronger with the sharp and relatively quick rise in oil prices at the gas pumps, the moment when we had to pay $4.00 for a gallon of gasoline, panic set in and the screams got louder and louder to do something about it and unfortunately, most people are looking for the U.S. government in Washington D.C. to take immediate action and bring the price down.

            For us here at Common Sense Politics, the biggest surprise is the fact that there appears to be agreement across the board now that oil is bad. We have known for a long time that environmentalists, first and foremost among them the Global Warming ‘Warner’s’ led by their messiah Al Gore, and their liberal allies in the Democrat party, the vast majority of media members and educators have all espoused their disdain for oil but that esteemed members of industry, the Republican party are also now speaking out in rather negative terms about this commodity is truly surprising. The calls for alternate and renewable energy sources have become louder and louder, nearly bordering on hysteria. These concerns are expressed in many ways, primarily through the use of buzzwords such as “We cannot drill our way out of this situation”, another one is “drilling more in America has no immediate impact on the price of oil at the pump” or “we are sending too much money overseas to buy oil and it ruins our economy” and of course, there is always the blame game “it’s President Bush’s fault”, we also have heard that only an immediate switch to other energy sources is the only answer to our dilemma.

            There is a great deal of individual action; for instance, Oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is spending millions of his own money to tell us through television ads that we have to develop alternate energy sources and he wants to see the development of wind farms in America’s ‘wind tunnels’, wherever they are. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has for the time being another fantastic and very innovative solution for us here in America: He wants us all to inflate our tires and have regular tune-ups. As he stated, this is the equivalent of additional offshore drilling. This incredibly silly proposal by a Presidential candidate is scary in its stupidity and does not even deserve a rational response! And there are many more of these kinds of proposals, all however, with the underlying theme that we have to rid ourselves of our dependence from oil and drilling for more oil domestically is not the solution.

            To this, we say ‘Hello, have you lost all your senses?’ The short answer to our current dilemma is the fact that We in this country (and we say ‘we’ generously because the average citizen has very little say in the grand scheme of things in America) have been sound asleep for quite some time! Let us look at the facts as they exist:

• v When oil was sold on the world market for $20 to $30 a barrel not even ten years ago, there was no need to tap into additional oil reserves domestically, in fact, it was not feasible for the oil industry to do so and it was considered smart to buy oil from other countries;
• v The current usage of oil in America amounts to approximately 21 million barrels a day, an annual total of 7.7 billion barrels;
• v The currently identified and untapped oil reserves on the Outer Continental Shelves (OCS), in Alaska’s National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) and the oil shale deposits in the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are estimated to have nearly 830 billion barrels of oil; these reserve by itself (and not counting our current oil production in other places in the United States) would provide oil for approximately 108 years;
• v Contrary to statements from “oil enemies”, it will not take at least ten years before we would see the oil flowing out of these untapped reserves. The true time frame differs drastically from these negative statements. Oil from rigs on the Outer Continental Shelves can flow after three to four years, Oil from ANWR can flow after about four to five years and only massive production of oil from the shale deposits in the Rockies will take a few years longer;
• v Alternate energy sources such as wind, solar, nuclear power, hydro fuels and the like will not be ready to replace oil for many years if ever;
• v The price of oil as traded on the world market is currently down by about 25 % from its peak in June. And why is that? Could it have possibly something to do with the fact that the oil speculators realize that we are getting serious about additional drilling in America as reflected by the lifting of the Executive branch’s moratorium of OCS drilling by President Bush? We believe it could have been a contributing factor.

            Why do we as the citizenry of the United States accept when our ‘leaders’ tell us totally non-sensical stories that are factually inaccurate (to put it mildly) if not outright false when they lie to us for personally ideological or other agenda-driven reasons? We should not! Why are we continuing to believe what is being opinion-reported in the media and other groups when we could just demand to get the facts from experts and people in the know? We should not allow this to continue and let them know about it in no uncertain terms.

            If we can make one prediction for the near or even long term future it is that we will not likely see automobiles with solar panels or little windmills on their roofs. Nor will we wipe out oil as a major commodity in our lives no matter how much it is being demonized by its “enemies”. After all, Oil is the one commodity that has been a major contributor to advances in every aspect and corner of America for the past century and will remain as such! Another reality is that America as a country of slightly over 300 million inhabitants will not be able to go from a daily usage of 21 million barrels of oil to something else in the short or long term, it is just not going to happen!

            As a last thought, we like to remind you as we agree with columnist Betty Freauf who wrote nearly three years ago in one of her columns on the subject of oil shortages:

            “It says a lot of folks cannot understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country. Well, there is a simply answer. Nobody bothered to check the oil. We just did not know we were getting low. The reason for that is purely geographical. Our OIL is located in Alaska, California, Coastal Floriad, Coastal Louisiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas but our dipsticks are located in Washington, D.C.”