Time to shatter OPEC … again

Last Friday, the "president" of Iran told an oil and gas exhibition in Tehran that the price of oil was too low.

"The oil price of $115 a barrel in today's global markets is a deceiving figure," he said. "Oil is a strategic commodity that needs to discover its real value." The "president" accused Western countries of "selfishness" in their quest for oil and called the U.S. dollar "a handful of paper."

Well, I don't know about you, but I've had enough of this arrogant pipsqueak "president" and the "el supremo" of Venezuela, and the "royal" family of the desert and all the other blowhards of the OPEC cartel.

What makes me even angrier than their smug superiority is the fact that we brought this on ourselves. And it's all happened before.

The Arab Oil Embargo and other price and supply jolts of the 1970s stimulated two very different reactions in the U.S.

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First there was the Carter reaction: Solve the problem through conservation. Put on a sweater, turn down the thermostat, wait in line at the gas pump, tax the evil oil companies that caused all this misery with their greed and never criticize OPEC for fear of further antagonizing them. The era of abundance was over; the era of limitations had begun – and it was probably good for us anyway.

When Americans got fed up enough with that approach, Carter was out, Reagan in. Reagan got Congress to repeal the oil taxes and open up public lands to oil drilling. The oil boom in the U.S. that followed increased supply worldwide (with new discoveries offshore Britain and Norway, for example). The lines at the gas stations disappeared, the gas price plummeted, and the economy boomed. The price of a barrel of oil in 1983 touched $10. OPEC was shattered.

We have forgotten this history. Today, drilling for oil in the U.S. is out. "Global warming" advocates preach that oil drilling, transportation and use is killing the planet – the ice caps are melting, the seas are rising, drought and famine will follow. All because of your SUV. And too many Americans are buying it.

Aside from the fact (admitted even by Al Gore) that the seas have risen and fallen many times over the life of the planet (a skeleton of a whale was recently found with other sea bed debris on a mesa hundreds of feet above the current sea level near my home), and aside from the fact that the weather changes seasonally and over time, once again the dominant thought in America is that our abundant lifestyle is causing harm to the planet. Pure gibberish.

This gibberish has an effect in the real world. When Clinton declared vast areas of public lands and offshore waters off limits, new oil drilling in the U.S. was nearly eliminated, and some older oil fields are declining despite new recovery technology. So, as our domestic oil production decreased, our dependence on foreign oil has increased, and with it, our dependence on OPEC.

The price of gas has steadily increased over this decade. Before 2006, Bush could not get even the Republican Congress to open up ANWAR or offshore federal areas, but test wells did proceed in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Alaska. In 2005, the average price of a gallon of regular gas went higher than $2.

After the Democrats victory in 2006, the Carter mentality took over. Oil drilling was out, big oil was evil, higher taxes the remedy for greed, and conservation and "alternatives" were in. I paid $4.05 per gallon for my last fill up. Is it too low yet?

Meanwhile, Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petroleo Barsileiro has the Reagan approach – drill for energy independence. Last week, Brazil's oil minister announced that the Carioca offshore oil field could hold up to 33 billion barrels – more than the all of U.S. reserves. This on top of last December's discovery in Brazil of the Tupi offshore field which then was estimated to promise oil importer Brazil its independence from OPEC.

In the Gulf of Mexico, Jack No. 2 well documented massive oil reserves in U.S. waters similar in scope to these Brazilian fields. The U.S. reaction? No more drilling there. Instead, the nearby Cubans (aided by the oil-thirsty Chinese) will drill in international waters in the same field.

Canada is recovering oil from the Bakken Formation in Saskatchewan today. This formation, part of the Williston Basin extends down into the U.S. where current government estimates of 3 to 4.3 billion barrels make it the largest U.S. reserve outside of Alaska. So far, no drilling allowed.

Last year, Congress even forbid the purchase by the U.S. Navy of this Canadian oil because of the "damage" the extraction of the oil did to the planet.

When you go to the gas pump and the $4 gas becomes $5 and then $10 per gallon, remember this is a self-inflicted price brought to you by the Carterite Democrats in Congress. The ghost of Reagan pleads with us to drill the oil literally bubbling up under our feet and shatter OPEC once more.

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