Paying at the Pump

Recently, the president of Shell Oil had an interview with CNN where he advocated the US drilling more oil. You can read that interview here.

I don't know how realistic people would have taken someone who were to quip, "$125 barrel oil in 1 year!" back in 2007, but it's here and due to supply and demand, it shows no sign of letting down. The average cost of fuel in the US is 3.62/gallon. I remember when it was 0.79/gallon in 1990's....can it get back to those days? Why not?

The US simply needs to bite the bullet, and drill it's on oil reserves, regardless of where these reserves lie. But, in order to do that, it needs a fundamental shift of idealogy that says you can tap the environment for commodity use. Right now, we dare not tap the Anwar reserves lest it harm the native flora and fauna.

Remember folks, there's two sides to this argument, and both are the extremists. There are those who don't want to use our reserves at all....and we know what that does to a forrest that's not cruised and cleared properly (forrest fires will take care of the forrest if we don't utilize it). The other side are those who wish to clear cut everything and strip the land of all her resources, without thought of the future. Both are wrong, and both mindsets have contributed to where we're at currently.

We need to tap our own oil, not our reserves because that's only a short-term solution. We need a long-term answer to this long-term problem. Granted, it will take about 8 years+ even if we decide today to tap US oil, before we see a reduction at the pump, but at least that's movement in the right direction.

If we keep the same policy we've had for the last 30 years, other nations will surpass America as they use the resources they have in the ground. While this is not a license to use our resources wantonly, it is, however, a desire for wisdom in addressing how we should use the resources God has given us.