Access to the Resource
By Lee Gerhard, Ph.D, Kansas

When the 1973 Arab oil embargo hit, we imported 35% of our oil. Today we import over 60%. The global demand for oil keeps rising, and there is question whether the industry has the capacity to meet this continuous rise in demand. The economies of China and India are rapidly growing, and their huge populations demand the same access to transportation and industrial energy of leading developed nations. We are competing with them for the available supply of liquid energy.

Our domestic prices reflect this. Natural gas prices are high, oil prices are high. Our economy depends of cheap energy for its vibrancy. It is in the power of the American people to reduce their energy costs. Natural gas is plentiful in the Rocky Mountains and off shore our coasts, but environmental preservation pressures have made these resources unavailable to the people. Yet, natural gas is a preferred alternative to coal for the same environmental community.

Your choice is clear  development of these resources under solid environmental regulation, or continuing cost increases for home heating transportation, and economic development (=jobs).

Accessing the oil under a tiny portion of the barren Arctic coastal plain could provide us with 10% of our oil use for many years to come, reducing the deficit in our foreign trade substantially, and adding to treasury receipts, thus reducing taxes. People argue that they dont want the oil companies to make obscene amounts of money from public lands resources. First, of course, that is rhetoric of environmental extremists who dont think it necessary to tell the truth. Oil companies make money some years, but lose money like other industries in other years. They average about the same as the all-manufacturing index. The problem is that these companies produce a necessity of life, like pharmaceutical companies, and people resent having to depend on them. What most people dont understand is the huge amount of capital necessary to explore for and produce oil and gas, and the huge risks to that capital  where else can you lose it all, except in a casino?

Arguments of pristinity of this barren wasteland aside, perhaps it is time to let our own People share the risks and the rewards of exploration in the Arctic. Perhaps having the government do the first exploration for oil on the coastal plain would be appropriate. Once they have tested the 1002 area and established production, then the mineral rights can be competitively leased with actual knowledge of possible reserves. The People will have invested in the exploration, and the people will profit from identifying the amounts of oil likely to be present. Of course, if there is a dry hole, the people have paid for that as well. We will have shared the risks and the rewards of petroleum exploration, and have 100% control over any environmental impacts of the exploration.

What could be better for America? Environmental control, profit sharing, and risk sharing by the People, of the People, and for the People. And no one could have made any obscene profit  from the public lands.