Problem isn't Big Oil; it's Congress

Sen. Durbin rides into town, gathers all the TV cameras and reporters he can muster, stands in front of a Chicago gas station where gas sells for $4.25 a gallon and announces that he is really going to help us with high gas prices - he is going to call a committee hearing in Washington and blast Big Oil. If I recall correctly, this is the fourth time in the last four years that he has pulled this stunt, and each time the price has gone up. We don't need this kind of help.

No, Sen. Durbin, the problem is not "Big Oil". It is you and Congress. You have blocked every attempt that has been made to let us drill off the outer coast (where one of the people at your own hearing indicated that there was over a trillion barrels of oil available and far more natural gas). And there is oil available in Anwar in Alaska. Yes, there are environmental issues, but the same issues were brought up the last time we drilled there and none of them came to pass. And those of us that have been around long enough remember the huge fight that went up to stop the building of nuclear energy plants. And sad to say it worked. Now I see where one of the founders of Green Peace admits he made a terrible mistake opposing nuclear energy. What cleaner fuel is there than that?

We are the only country in the world that stops its own people from developing some of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the world! (Again, from your own committee hearing).

So to Congress (Democrats as well as Republicans), I say stop playing games with us. The problem is supply and demand and you know it. Let us go after our own supply and we won't have to go begging for oil.

As for alternative sources of energy, of course we need to constantly be searching, and conservation should be a top priority, but we need politicians who can see the big picture and stop knuckling under to every little special interest group that comes along.

Roger Dauchy

Wheaton