Friday, Jul. 18, 2008

Drilling debate serves the parties, not the nation

ONE DAY THIS WEEK, both U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham called for an increase in domestic drilling for oil.

Sound encouraging? Well, it isn’t.

Rep. Clyburn’s statement called on oil companies to drill more in areas currently available to them, as his way of saying they should not be allowed to drill in offshore areas where Republicans would like them to. Along the way, he gratuitously stirred populist resentment, suggesting the cause of record gas prices is “record profits” for the oil industry, which he characterized as “flat-out robbery,” while global demand goes unmentioned. Democratic Party boilerplate.

Sen. Graham’s statement was less complicated, simply praising the president’s decision to lift the executive moratorium on offshore drilling. The executive action he praised was yet another stomp on the gas pedal in the game of political chicken the GOP is playing with Congress. Lifting the executive ban puts pressure on Congress to lift the statutory ban, but accomplishes nothing by itself. In other words, his expression of support amounted to Republican Party boilerplate.

What this country desperately needs and isn’t getting — in fact, it’s not even on the horizon — is a comprehensive, rational energy policy that is intelligently designed with the nation’s best interests, not those of a political party, in mind. But our elected officials are still playing the usual game of taking actions designed not to solve the country’s problems, but merely to back their opponents into a corner.

Each party could bring something of value to the table. For instance, Rep. Clyburn was right to say that opening new offshore oil fields, as the president wants to do, brings “no promise” of a “reduction in price.” But then, that’s not why we should drill, either in the 68 million acres Mr. Clyburn says are already open, or in the cordoned-off areas, or in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. As Mr. Graham correctly says, “Every barrel of oil we can find in America will be one less we have to compete with China and India for or be subject to OPEC price-setting,” and that is what makes all sorts of increased domestic production worth consideration.

In fact, Mr. Graham understates the stakes. Why can Iran dare the rest of the world to try to stop it from obtaining nuclear weapons? Because it holds a dagger to the narrow throat of world oil production — the Strait of Hormuz. Similar answers explain why the world stands helpless before externally aggressive and internally oppressive regimes in Russia, Sudan and Venezuela.

Some Democrats dismiss domestic drilling as something that will not have an economic effect in the short term, and they are right. But our goal should not be a short-term decrease in gasoline prices, because that is self-defeating. It discourages conservation and the development of alternative energy sources and increases demand, and greater demand leads to higher prices.

Rising gasoline prices are a given. We should produce more oil domestically merely as a way of keeping more of the high prices we’re paying in this country, and sending less of our money to some of the world’s most oppressive and obnoxious regimes.

This country is suffering in the short term, and will suffer more in the future, without pragmatic energy policies that move us as rapidly as possible away from dependence on foreign oil. That will take visionary, courageous leadership. Neither elected Democrats nor elected Republicans are providing it.