No Oil Addiction

I am giving an ABC program due to air tonight hosted by Cheshire Charlie Gibson some free promotion. The old line media networks and the moribund newspapers want to wean us off petroleum or, more to the point, punish us for its use. Whether terrorists could close a choke point to our access to Middle Eastern oil should not even be a concern. We have sufficient resources of our own in the US and certainly in North America that we should not be dependent in the first place on people who do not have our best interests at heart. When we have the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, why should we rely on Saudis who may want to kill us? In any event, it is more likely the Iranians would close the Strait of Hormuz than a terrorist manage to sink a supertanker in the Suez Canal. We have oil shale, more efficient drilling techniques to extract oil that was impossible to obtain before, new injection methods to gather remaining oil in wells that were thought to be played out, we have coastal reserves that are only off limits due to environmental pressure. We and Canada and Mexico have enough petroleum to meet our own needs. What we do not have is sufficient refinery capacity as green activists have blocked almost all refinery construction and modernization for a generation. Also EPA-mandated boutique fuel blends have exacerbated regional gasoline shortages and pushed up prices. There should be one national standard for fuel so the limited refinery capacity we do have, does not end up diluting our resources by having to produce more than a dozen custom blends. Switch grass, liquid propane, coal gasification as Germany developed during World War II to take advantage of coal reserves in the Ruhr and Saar when access to oil fields was cut off, all are great ways to stretch existing fuel reserves whether we have passed peak production or not. Nuclear energy, hydroelectric, solar and wind are fine. If someone develops a commercially viable substitute for petroleum, more power to them. But I love the sound of gasoline engines purring and motors whirring, it is the sound of progress and truly is the "engine of our prosperity" to be fostered and rewarded not taxed and punished as the Luddite Obamites believe.