Opinion: We Should Be Drilling for Oil in the US

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oil-rigBy Deroy Murdock

May we drill now, please?

At this writing, circumstances in the Middle East may change between this sentence and my last paragraph.

What began in mid-December as an uprising that sent Tunisian President Ben Ali into Saudi exile Jan. 14 quickly inspired Cairo’s Tahrir Square rebellion. Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for 29 years, hastily retired when his people hounded him from Heliopolis Palace into his vacation compound in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Two Iranian war ships this week floated north through the Suez Canal. This was the Iranian Navy’s first appearance in the Arab equivalent of the Panama Canal since 1979’s revolution installed the Ayatollah Khomeini and his joyless, sexist, bloodthirsty theocracy.

Eastern Libya now is controlled by regular citizens, freshly armed by soldiers who largely disobeyed orders to shoot their fellow citizens. Strongman Moammar Gadhafi ordered two fighter jets to bomb his constituents, prompting the pilots to defect to Malta.

“I have not yet ordered the use of force,” Gadhafi said Tuesday night. “When I do, everything will burn.”

Time.com reports that Gadhafi has instructed his operatives to sabotage Libya’s oil fields, supposedly to show Libyans that without Gadhafi, things could get really crazy. Libyan production already is down 25 percent, and Italy’s Eni and Spain’s Repsol have suspended operations there.

In Bahrain’s capital of Manama, Pearl Square witnesses daily protests and occasional state-sponsored bullets aimed at peaceful demonstrators.

Yemen could spin into total disarray, with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula – led by American-born radical Muslim Anwar al-Awlaki – waiting to pounce on any emerging opportunity.

Next door, Saudi Arabia’s ruthless royal family nervously watches these developments.

So do Israelis, who must feel like residents of the nicest mansion in Malibu just as the neighbors’ homes catch fire, and the Santa Ana-wind-driven flames race up the canyon with menacing urgency.

Americans absorb all of this in justifiable bewilderment. We hope that matters evolve as well as they did in autumn 1989, when one Communist domino toppled into the next, and Karl Marx tumbled onto the ash heap of history, exactly as Ronald Reagan promised.

Americans also worry that the Arab street, happy today to shed the shackles of decades-old dictatorships, soon might look less cheerful. This happened in Iran, where the Shah’s heavy hand yielded to the iron fists of the globally meddlesome mullahs.

Flowing through this real-life Hieronymus Bosch canvas is the same ingredient in the paints that define his masterpieces: Oil.

Petroleum futures Thursday reached $103.41 per barrel before falling back below $100, their highest price since September 2008. Unleaded gasoline averages $3.24 per gallon – up 55 cents, year-on-year. Summer road trips may push prices higher.

Amid all of this, the Obama administration treats America’s domestic petroleum supply like the Smithsonian’s Hope Diamond: Something to be observed and admired, but not touched.

Like it or not, America relies heavily on oil today, for jobs, commerce, and our very existence. Alas, oil comes mainly from an area that is as stable as a prison riot. “Precarious” barely describes America’s predicament. And yet, a huge part of the solution – domestic oil and gas – lies just beneath our feet, if only President Barack Obama would let us open the basement door and light this dormant furnace.

May we drill now, please?

Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

{KnoxNews/Matzav.com Newscenter}


6 COMMENTS

  1. Drill now – and develop alternatives for later. We cannot wait any longer. We haven’t built a nuclear power plant in tens of years – yet our population and demand has increased by over 50%! China and India are now major consumers of oil – trying to get the same barrels that we need.

  2. For those of you who aren’t old enough to remember – that’s how Texas got to be so rich. At one time Texas was THE source of US oil. What happened? The oil fields were pumped out – used up. The only oil in the continental US now is either offshore – with all the hazards that involves – or in oil shales which have a very low percentage of oil and are very expensive to use. It’s not likely that we’ll ever be self-sufficient in oil again.

    #2 is dead-on right. We’ve got to develop alternatives, or be forever at the mercy of foreign oil powers. BTW, many of the companies drilling in US waters are foreign owned – BP = British Petroleum. It’s time we got moving and developed alternatives.

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