How candidates deal with fuel prices

Price of gas is well over $4 where you live? Join the rest of the country. It's starting to affect everything from the cost of grain, to the cost of steel. Since the oil crisis of the 1970's, we have based our entire economy on petroleum. For the previous quarter century, oil was cheap and easy to use to keep our country moving. That is no longer the case. We're going to extreme lengths to get oil, from squeezing it out of sand in Canada, to setting new records for deep water drilling. The new extremes coupled with the shortage of refinery capacity and the unending appetite of the planet for fuel have cause a crisis that may go beyond $140 oil.

So what can we do? McCain continues plead for his gas tax holiday, but recently has suggested a new plan. More drilling in our backyard. This would provide oil from some of the most secure source in the world, while also providing new sources of income for American companies and that states they drill in. While he suggests drilling more off our coastal waters, he is still opposed to drilling in Alaska, giving a good view of both sides of his coin. This basic rhetoric, of more domestic drilling to provide energy security and lower prices, has recently been touted by Dick Cheney. McCain also supports development of alternative and bio fuels.

Obama has made reducing dependence on foreign oil, and oil in general, a core to his campaign. By supporting not only the recently passed increase in fuel economy for vehicles, but also increasing those fuel standards and helping US automakers in achieving them, his plan would reduce overall oil consumption. This is in stark contrast to the way McCain has behaved by skipping many of the important votes on environmental bills. Both Clinton and Obama made the effort the return for those votes, even with their busy pre-primary schedules. McCain's answer has become increased production.

Unfortunately the suggestion that drilling in the US will lower the price of gas and oil is far from reality. Recent studies have shown that even drilling the massive oil reserve of Alaska would only bring down the price of oil by potentially 1% by 2025. Now if the price of oil reaches $200 like some major economists believe, that would be a whole $2. If you consider how much oil we might have, we might be able to bring the entire country's price down 5-7%. That is only if we started drilling everywhere we have oil in the next 5 years. Given many oil companies' lethargic attempts to increase production and capacity, I don't see that happening.

Since we opened the oil markets, crude oil has become a publicly traded commodity. This is why, even with the recent announcement of Saudi Arabia's increase in production, the price of oil will not drop significantly over the next 6 months. Consumption is starting to slow in the US, as people take more public transportation and move away from large SUV's, but not fast enough to make a dent. This long term price increase would theoretically give rise to alternative fuels that are too expensive for $50 oil. We should take advantage of this time, and the public's dissatisfaction with the price of gas to develop ways to get ourselves off oil. In 30 years we will be short on places to find oil, and petroleum fuels will skyrocket.

This is why short term solutions won't work. We need to invest in technologies that may not be ready for 5-10 years, but that will help remove oil from our dominant fuel by the time it starts running out. The side benefit to all this is that we can combat global warming at the same time. Sadly, it seem that McCain may only be providing the body of this country a band aid for a broken bone. I suppose it is still better than Bush's wait-and-see attitude, hoping it heals itself.
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