What to do about energy

The only explanation anyone seems to have for $4 a gallon gas is supply and demand.

Supply is down. Demand is high. And the wider the gap between the two, the higher the price.

As politicians, geologists, economists and environmentalists debate the best way to lower prices, there seems to be two options: find more oil or use less.

We suggest both.

Let’s start with increasing supply. Offshore drilling seems to be the most readily available way to do that.

Currently, only 20 percent of the country’s offshore reserves are open for production, and they produce 27 percent of the oil we consume.

The government estimates another 18 billion barrels could be located, largely off the coast of Florida and California.

Louisiana’s Gulf Coast certainly paid the price for decades of offshore production but present day drilling in deeper waters has proven to be safe and effective. Even during hurricanes Katrina and Rita, there were no spills or rig-related catastrophes. The threat of hefty penalties can further encourage sound practices to avoid environmental damage, though the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster leaves a murky slick around the potential for punitive damages.

Opponents have dismissed more drilling as a “gimmick” that would not lower the price substantially. In some ways, they’re right, more drilling would not bring instant, sustainable relief. At best, it’s a tourniquet, holding us together until we get to the hospital.

First, no one is sure what is out there. And it would take several years to construct wells and pipe the fuel into usable form.

But it would take a bite out of speculators, who some economists blame for driving the prices past $140 a barrel for crude.

Although we live in a state where a $1 increase in the price of a barrel of oil means $12 million in the state’s coffers, we also have to acknowledge supply isn’t everything.

We must decrease our personal demand. Americans use 390 million gallons of gasoline each day, which is 44 percent of all petroleum consumption. Each of us can do a little to save in the short term. Longer term, we’ll need industry to build more fuel-efficient vehicles and community strategies that address sprawl and public transportation.

As well, the government and energy companies must invest in research to produce energy and invest in alternatives that are already there wind, solar, nuclear.

Make them affordable and practical, and we’ll buy into it. Americans are less in love with oil than we are with the freedom to travel and create and build.

But those things take energy.

We must have a comprehensive plan to produce more oil for the short term and create new forms of energy in the long term.

– The Times (Shreveport)