Home > Jay Bookman > Archives > 2008 > May > 23
Friday, May 23, 2008
ANWR and $4 gasoline
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The prospect of $4 gasoline has no doubt convinced folks to stay a little closer to home over the holiday weekend, and it has also gotten people more than a little angry at politicians who let us get into this situation.
So here’s a little data to help clarify things:
For decades, the Republicans have rebuffed calls for greater energy conservation and fuel efficiency with one line of attack that they have repeated over and over in various forms:
We don’t need to conserve, we need to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge…
If only those silly environmentalists would let us drill in ANWR….
Why do those liberals love caribou more than humans….
Why do those greenies want us to stay dependent on foreign oil….
Yadayadayada.
Well, now we know the truth. The federal Energy Information Agency, a branch of the Energy Department and part of the Bush administration, has released a study of the impact of opening ANWR on oil prices. The study can be found at the EIA’s website.
Here’s what the EIA found: At peak production somewhere around 2030, oil from ANWR would reduce the price of oil — now about $135 a barrel — by a whoppingly huge 75 cents. That’s a decline of 0.55 percent, or barely two cents on a gallon of gasoline.
And we’d probably never see even that tiny reduction, the EIA warned.
“Assuming that world oil markets continue to work as they do today, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could neutralize any potential price impact of ANWR oil production by reducing its oil exports by an equal amount,” it concluded.
Just thought you’d want to know….
Don’t go there, Sen. Clinton
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If Hillary Clinton presses a bitter rules fight for delegates in Michigan and Florida — and she’s making disturbing suggestions she may do just that — she will destroy the legacy built with her husband and confirm the claims of extreme ego and selfishness always levied by her worst enemies.
Clinton agreed long ago to the rules that she now insists be changed, showing no concern whatsoever back then for the right of Michigan and Florida voters to be heard, a right she now claims to believe is sacred.
And if that tactic results in a Republican victory in the fall, which it very well might do, she will be blamed far more strongly for that loss — by history and her party — than Ralph Nader ever was in 2000.
