The GOP gas problem in a nutshell

August 19, 2005

The Washington Post had an interesting item today on how politicians have just run out of things to say about high gas prices. Voters are angry, Bush’s energy bill offers little in the way of solutions, the strategic petroleum reserve is off limits, and GOP talking points have, if you’ll pardon the expression, been tapped dry. Everyone at the federal level knows gas prices are high, but they just don’t know what to do about it.

But there was one anecdote that stood out that captured the problem perfectly.

Rep. Anne M. Northup (R-Ky.) said she heard from concerned constituents at every stop this month, including at a gas station in her district, where it cost her $41 to fill up her Ford Escape, one of the smaller sport-utility vehicles on the road. She said one of her messages to voters is: Pressure Washington to allow drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The energy policy recently passed by Congress and signed into law by Bush does not permit drilling in the refuge, but Republicans hope to open this area to drilling as part of this year’s budget agreement.

First of all, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, drilling ANWR would likely produce only 3.2 billion barrels of oil, which would meet less than six months of demand. Moreover, this oil, which would take 50 years to extract, would not begin to reach the market until 2015.

Second of all, Northup was complaining about gas after filling up her SUV. According to Ford, Northup’s truck gets about 20 miles to the gallon. This from a congresswoman who received a whopping 6% rating last year from the League of Conservation voters.

So, in a nutshell, the Republican approach to high gas prices is to drive an SUV, vote for an energy bill that ignores conservation, and drill ANWR, which according to the Bush administration’s own estimates, won’t do much of anything about high gas prices.

How predictable.

I’ve been tracking the prices in my local area since the July 4th weekend, when it was $2.47 for unleaded. As of August 16, 2005, a period of 43 days, the price had risen to $2.89. Basically, the cost went up a penny a day for 42 days.

P.S. to Carpetbagger … The comments section FINALLY works for me. I have no idea what happened or how it got fixed, but YIPPEEE!

  • Funny that they haven’t used this crisis
    to push for ANWR drilling. As if they
    realize how easily it is exposed as an
    ersatz solution.

    I have never understood the logic behind
    drilling our way out of foreign oil dependence.
    We hold 3% of known oil reserves, and use
    25% of the world’s petroleum production.
    Seems to me, the more we drill, the faster
    we run out of our own supplies. Then when
    that supposed crisis comes – Voila! We’re
    entirely dependent on foreign oil.

    But oil and logic don’t mix, do they?

  • I have never understood this GOP obsession with Alaska drilling. Does anyone seriously think this is going to fix gas prices now or supply issues at all? I don’t even think this twit belives it – even if she says it. Anyone who thinks about this proposal and knows anything, or has an iota of common sense know that drilling for gas and getting into cars is not a process that happens in a day, week, month, year.

    The GOP position on ANWAR remds me of when I grew up in N.O. and Gov. Edwards up before a jury (back in late 1980’s not the later one), his solutions for Louisiana economic woe following the oil-bust was gambling and the lottery. Full stop. Those two things were going to bring LA back to financial stability. While Edwards wanted to reward himself (he wouldn’t have to fly to Vegas or Atlantic City) the GOP is rewarding the oil companies.

  • I don’t quite get the ANWR obsession either. It is literally a drop in the bucket. I’m not sure even if we did drill there it would increase the world supply of petroleum by a measly 1% a year. The best I can figure is a few well connected lobbyists for a handful of companies that will do very well from ANWR are hounding them about it and have conviced them it will magically solve all problems.

  • It’s a two-fer — fool Americans into blaming Dems for all the energy problems, as Dems are “obstructing” ANWR and therefore preventing us from “solving” our foreign oil dependence, AND it keeps America distracted from Rethugs’ real agenda of destroying the environment, of drilling everywhere else, and allowing the Congress to continue to ignore real — and painful — solutions to the problem that IS coming.

    It is a great political canard that the Rethugs will pull out again in ’06 and ’08, just like gay marriage, “activist” judges, and tax “relief.” All of it is B.S., but it works, every time. So, after the ’06 and ’08 elections, we’ll see the new counterparts to ’04’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” and we’ll scratch our heads — yet again — about just how stupid so many people can be.

    Part of the blame goes to the Dems, for sure. A lot also goes to the CCCP (Compliant Complicit Corporate Press) that refuses to hold the Rethugs to any real fire for their mendacity and corruption. Finally, blame it on the lazy, ill-informed electorate who refuse to vote in droves (of course, if the Dems and the Rethugs believed in voting rights, they would change the system so that voting was made a hell of a lot easier than it is today), and refuse to inform themselves of what is going on.

    Maybe the $3.00 gasoline will do it; if not, it will take a another depression or another World War. I sincerely hope not, but I fear that nothing else will wake up most people who have blinders on to others’ suffering.

  • I will never agree to oil drilling in ANWR until we take steps to make damned sure we don’t continue to waste so much gas on stupid, oversized, bloated, SUVs and pickup trucks.

  • I’ve never quite understood why “foreign oil dependence”
    is bad, while “foreign everything else is good,” is just
    fine. I mean, really. When World War III begins over
    diminishing supplies of oil, at the same time that
    global warming has produced global chaos, how,
    exactly, are we going to fight China and Russia
    and North Korea and Iran, and the rest of the world
    that has come to hate us during this administration
    when we don’t make anything anymore?

    Do you think the rest of the world has not noticed
    that a few “deadenders” in Iraq have brought the
    world’s greatest military power in history to its
    knees?

    Every morning I wake up, thinking that the
    American people have gotten a little
    stupider, the government a little eviler,
    and corporations a little greedier, and
    I ask how can we hated progressives do
    anything at all to stop the madness?

  • If I remember the facts correctly, I believe that ANWR will produce only about 5% of the United States’ daily consumption of oil. It’s quite literally just a drop in the bucket. And it will do virtually NOTHING to divert our reliance on foreign oil.

    What ANWR will do is provide enormous profits for the oil & gas companies drilling up there. With the price of a barrel of crude at an all time high, the incentive to drill there is literally in the tens – even hundreds – of billions of dollars. And it’s no secret that our esteemed leaders and their supporters have enormous financial holdings in these companies.

    I also believe that the underlying rationale for Iraq is to control the supply of oil in the Middle East, which will help to ensure that emerging powerhouse countries such as China and India do not get in the way of the pipeline to the United States. Without serious development of alternative fuels that can be cost-effectively used for commercial and industrial purposes, oil is the only game in town. And he who controls the oil, controls everything else of monetary value. As we all remember from our Econ 101 classes, as demand increases and supply dwindles, the price goes up…and up…and up. And in a market as price inelastic as the oil/gas market is (has anyone really stopped buying gas in spite of prices approaching $3.00 a gallon?), that means that profits are assured. It’s even worse than that because OPEC’s cartel determines the price, which can – or does – result in an artificially inflated price much of the time.

    Sad, but true.

  • ANWR drilling is a huge gift to the US Oil companies. I recall seeing the number $250B attached. Even over 30-50 years that’s still a big number.

    But it won’t do crap for US energy independence. Quite possible the oil would be shipped to Japan or China anyways. Is all Prudhoe Bay oil going to the lower 48 states?

  • I don’t believe there’s any stipulation that the O&G companies have to keep the Alaska-drilled crude in the U.S. It will go where the market is, including the heating up economies of China and India.

  • “I have never understood this GOP obsession with Alaska drilling. Does anyone seriously think this is going to fix gas prices now or supply issues at all?” – ET

    ANWR has huge symbolic value to the enviro community. Finally drilling in the reserve would knock a real emotional prop out of the already reeling conservation movement and demoralize the enviro movement further. The movement would loose further credibility as a protector of wildness and loose more confidence in itself as a bulwark against encroachment.

    RepubCo wants every pocket of resistance to all of it’s corporate desires to be overwhelmed and leave the field in defeat. ANWR has been “sacred ground”. If it can be corrupted, what else deserves such dedicated protection?

    The Right has been very astute at using symbols to both build and destroy. They want to destroy the environmental movement.

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