News that acclaimed American author Harper Lee has a follow-up book to “To Kill a Mockingbird” triggered an energy-focused parallel thought in my mind as it relates to President Obama. His views on the Trans-Alaska pipeline and the Keystone pipeline are nothing more than: “To Kill the Pipelines.”
Should the president make this view a reality, America’s energy security will be dangerously undermined, and the prospects of a prolonged downturn in gasoline prices that benefit consumers to the tune of $720 per year will be in serious jeopardy.
Moreover, a host of jumbled, environmentalist-placating energy policies are being packaged as a clever PR attempt to credit the president with America’s energy revival. I’m not buying it, and neither should you. We need a comprehensive national energy strategy, not piecemeal proposals that impede the quest for energy security.
Here’s the back-story: President Obama’s recent proposal to extend “wilderness” status to 12 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge threatens the viability of the America’s biggest oil pipeline. The Trans-Alaska pipeline first came on line in 1977. By 1986, it was flowing with as much as two million barrels a day.
It is a mainstay of America’s domestic energy mix, supplying just under 5 percent of our domestic production, but a slowdown in exploration and development in Alaska threatens the pipeline’s future. Oil flow through the pipeline has dropped to about 500,000 barrels per day. If flows continue to decline, the pipeline may begin to fail. You see, less oil in the pipeline means slower-moving oil. Slower moving oil means colder oil. And colder oil causes problems.
The answer is to get more oil into the pipeline, but the chances of that happening when you make wide swaths of acreage off limits to potential production become challenging at best.
Then there’s Keystone, which would move Canadian oil down into the US, and form a beachhead for what could become a North American Energy Alliance. We’re closing in on nine years since the pipeline was first proposed. However, President Obama is intent on killing it with a presidential veto. By doing so, he’s threatening not only our relationship with Canada, but our ability to secure our domestic energy future and putting our children and grandchildren at risk.
Defenders of the Obama Administration will point to his opening of offshore federal lands on the east coast as a sign he is focused on securing America’s energy future. This is pure political posturing. Don’t buy it. There is little evidence to suggest there’s much oil there to satisfy US needs.
More significant is the president’s proposed budget, which extends his misguided approach to energy by proposing to increase taxes on the oil and gas industry by an estimated $95 billion in the next 10 years. The stunning increase in US crude oil production – coupled with Saudi Arabia’s unwillingness to cut its production amidst a downturn in global demand – has given American consumers what amounts to a $1.8 trillion break.
That’s good for the economy, but bad for the domestic oil and gas industry that made this possible. The industry has already idled one-fourth of its drilling rigs. As we fight for enhanced domestic energy security, the last thing we need is to derail the energy boom with hefty tax increases on domestic energy development.
I’ve been through a lot of swings, including at least four major oil price drops. In every case the price has recovered, and it will again. The critical need now is for the president and Congress to use this time, when we are not in a crisis, to develop a long-term strategy to ensure we develop and use our enormous domestic energy resources in the most effective manner.
It’s been said the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but if you didn’t, the second best time to plant one is today. We need to take the same view of American energy. The American public has grown weary of platitudes and PR. What they want is a real, long-term plan for our energy future, and they want it now.