Offshore Drilling and Our Future vs Charlie Crist

Charlie Crist has called for a special session to ban offshore drilling. Many right thinking people see this pure politicization of an issue that should be handled with common sense, but are loathe to speak out for fear of a public backlash.

Leadership is now needed on a key economic and security issue. It is the job of our state leaders to educate the public, not to kowtow to prevailing, but harmful, doctrines.

Taking a correct stand on this issue makes political sense too. We will not win seats by ignoring the issue and allowing Charlie Crist and the rest of the left to play it up. Doing so only makes us look callous in hindsight. Republicans will invariably be hit as the party of drilling regardless of what we do. The question is only whether we will allow the callous left to define the issue.

The Republican Party stands for jobs, the economy and national security. Drilling is an important part of all three. So we can take blame for having done the right thing, or we can infuse the public with common sense and rightly own the issue. The choice is ours.

There will be many issues raised as a result of the thorough investigation of the BP disaster. But being hasty with an outright ban will have its own economic effects. Gov. Christ has clearly moved to the left and is now more aligned with people who insist that the US must not be “dependent” upon imported oil. And these people rightly point out that we have socialized the cost of providing a military escort for those barrels that we import.

And keep in mind this is the same crowd that not only scolds us about being “sustainable”, but also frets about “peak oil”.

Peak oil is a specious issue. It is utter nonsense.

But all of this is chaos, confusion and unnecessary. First and foremost it shows how ignorant these people are about basic economics. Clear economic thinking shows us that we do not burn crude oil in our cars and airplanes. We burn refined products. We are AWASH in hydrocarbons that can be converted into usable fuels. The only issue is the cost (in all that word means) of those sources. We have the world’s greatest coal supply. We have shale oil, natural gas, and some crude oil. We have secondary sources such as switch grass and even sewage sludge.

Changing World Technologies ran a plant in Carthage, Missouri that converted the waste products of processing Butterball turkeys into biodiesel fuel. The technology worked. They went bankrupt because the world price of competing hydrocarbons was not high enough. The process they developed was successfully tested using urban sewage sludge as a feedstock.

If we can convert meat scraps and sewage sludge into biodiesel, not to mention coal or soybeans, then we will never run out of fuel. The only issue is the cost of conversion. If we found it was in our national interest to forbid the importation of crude oil, we could do so and survive.

It is my opinion that for national security reasons, the US should tax imports of oil (exempting Canada and perhaps Mexico) and that tax should slowly rise until domestic sources comprise at least 85% of US demand. But to meet the demand, the free market must be allowed to drill and develop whatever sources of hydrocarbons that will take. And where is where the left throws more roadblocks.

There was a time when we were sufficiently prosperous that we could afford to entertain blind NIMBYism and Gaia-ists. We could allow them to have their way as they pursued their unreachable dream of a pristine earth. Well, now that we can build massive solar power projects in the desert, it turns out that enviros and Gaia-ists suddenly find the power lines to those new sources will disrupt the precious desert tortoise. They don’t really want solar power, they really don’t want anyone to have any power at all. The enviros don’t want to ban drilling for oil near the shore, lest we soil our beaches, they want to ban all drilling everywhere lest humans advance and enjoy the things that fuel brings. They want clean energy but they don’t want the cleanest of all, nuclear. It turns out they don’t want clean energy, they don’t want humans to have energy so we can have air conditioned homes and offices. In fact, we cannot afford to entertain the demands of these people at all. They don’t want humans to be spoiling their Gaia. They want humanity to commit suicide, at least humanity who chooses to not live like animals.

Yes, we are going to learn a lot from the BP mess. We have drilled thousands of wells with few blowouts. I think only one blowout. And that is one too many. But we need the oil, and if the oil industry improves its designs, engineering and planning, then we should continue to drill, and continue to improve.

When people insist that we forbid drilling, that carries a cost too, a cost that these people refuse to acknowledge.

And the next time an enviro insists that the answer is more government, remind them that at the very moment that BP’s Macondo well was kicking natural gas up the drill pipe with such force that it blew out safety gear, the captain of the Deepwater Horizon was tied up welcoming a delegation of federal bureaucrats aboard so they could present the crew with a safety award. And recall that every single major drilling decision on the well was given rubber stamp approval by the federal bureaucracy.

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