Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Editorial: Pumping more oil
America and its president remain addicted to oil. What will happen when the supply runs low? We will live to see that day.
From the RoundTable blog
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President Bush feels Americans' pain at the pump. That's why on Monday he asked OPEC nations to produce more oil. Forget that two years ago this month the president had a brief brush with lucidity when he admitted America's addiction to crude.
He just couldn't move beyond Step 1 and break the dependency. For Bush it's always easier to slip into denial than to face long-term implications.
This is what he had to say on Monday about $3 a gallon gasoline: "When consumers have less purchasing power, it could cause the economy to slow down. I hope OPEC nations put more supply on the market. It would be helpful."
Ah, yes, making sure consumers have enough money to hit the malls. That's about what Americans have come to expect from a short-timer president incapable of looking past today's pump price.
To Bush, this is nothing more than a question of supply and demand. If demand increases -- as it certainly has with the United States' insatiable appetite for oil and with China and India's rapidly growing thirst -- then OPEC simply needs to pump more oil.
Even Bush understands there really isn't an oil fairy: "Oil is commodity. It isn't something that you just turn on a tap. It requires investment, exploration, a lot of capital."
Oh, and one other thing: It must exist. There aren't endless oil fields. Some experts believe the world might have already hit peak oil, the point at which maximum production has been reached. After peak oil is reached, annual production will inevitably fall.
Scientists disagree on when peak oil has or will occur, but even the optimistic U.S. Department of Energy figures the world has just 17 years before capacity starts to drop off -- and that's banking on new discoveries and better technology. During the same period, demand for oil is expected to increase about 70 percent.
Even Bush ought to be capable of doing the math, but a president reluctant to require a slight boost in gas mileage standards from automakers isn't about to look beyond his term in office.
To him, peak oil merits even less concern than global warming, and Americans now know how committed Bush is to that.
It's much easier to ask the Saudis to pump more oil today than to worry about whether anything much remains two decades hence.
As long as Americans can fill their tanks today and have money left to shop, why worry?
