$3.45 Per Gallon and Rising

Want to know why gasoline is so expensive and why the oil companies are making such huge profits? Here's the reason:

GREEN MOVEMENT ALSO BEHIND GAS HIKE
By Peter Bronson - Cincinnati Enquirer
3/13/08

USA Today recently reported that 40 percent of economists say the biggest threat of a recession is from rising oil prices. I don't believe it. There is no way 40 percent of economists could agree on anything.

But I do believe 40 percent of $3.50 gas is caused by eco-stupidity.
I know, it's downright heretical to even question the trendy green people who want to cripple our economy to save the planet. But if we take a peek behind the curtain in Eco-Oz, we might be surprised to find out who is pulling the levers to raise gas prices.

Such as:
Rising world demand from China, India and other emerging economies drives up world oil prices. About two-thirds of our oil is imported, and 20 percent comes from the Persian Gulf (less than I thought).

But what if we had our own Iraq-sized supply that we haven't even touched yet?

We do. According to the U.S. Geological Survey and American Petroleum Institute, we have at least 112 billion barrels of undrilled oil - "enough to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years."

By comparison, Iraq has 115 billion barrels and Venezuela 80 billion.

At least 16 billion barrels of our oil is in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling would only touch 8 percent of 17 million acres - but environmentalists say it's off-limits.

Half of our untapped oil is offshore, mainly on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts - blocked by environmental fears about spills. But since 1980, offshore platforms have pumped 5 billion barrels of oil with a spill rate of 0.001 percent. "Natural seeps introduce as much as 150 to 175 times more oil into U.S. marine waters than offshore oil development," says API.

During Hurricane Katrina, more than 3,000 oil platforms were in the path of winds as high as 200 mph, with no big spills.

Each barrel of oil pumped at home replaces a barrel of high-cost imported oil. But we're not supposed to get our lands dirty by pumping our own.

We knew five years ago that our refineries can't keep up with demand even at full capacity. But a new refinery hasn't been built since 1976, and the number in service has been shrinking. New ones are blocked by environmentalists, EPA regulations and Not-in-my-Backyard protests.

Later this spring, we'll get another gas-price spike when refineries shut down to blend reformulated gas. Nearly 20 different recipes are mandated by states and cities. But ethanol blends actually add to pollution and are 33 percent less efficient than unblended gas.
"Green" ethanol mandates also cause higher food prices, adding to gas-price inflation.

New environmental regulations to reduce sulfur have raised diesel prices, causing price inflation for everything shipped by trucks, trains and barges.

State gas taxes, often justified for conservation, are 28 cents per gallon in Ohio and 21 cents in Kentucky.

And for all their hysteria about global warming, environmentalists have also blocked the best alternative to coal and oil: pollution free, zero-carbon nuclear power that has safely generated 80 percent of the electricity in France for 25 years.

William Tucker, author of "Terrestrial Energy: How a Nuclear-Solar Alliance Can Save the Planet," says a typical coal-fired plant burns a ton of coal for each minute of electricity, releasing three tons of carbon dioxide.

Nuclear power requires new fuel rods every two years. "There is no exhaust, no carbon emissions, no sulfur sludge to be carted away hourly and heaped into vast dumps," Tucker said at Hillsdale College in Michigan. "There is no air pollution, no water pollution and no ground pollution."

But nuclear power is taboo because of exaggerated fears spread by environmentalists.
A headline the other day reported that new "green" houses near Seattle - designed at great expense to be environmentally sensitive - were burned down anyway by the Earth Liberation Front.

America will never be "green" enough, either, until gas is $25 a gallon. We should ignore the eco-stupidity and start pumping it ourselves.