Krauthammer is off base on oil issue
In Charles Krauthammer's recent column, he joins his fellow neoconservatives, the oil industry and Congressional Republicans in repeating the mantra that offshore drilling and opening up ANWR will be a panacea in addressing the United State's energy problems.
More domestic production appears to be part of a short-term solution, but as usual, Mr. Krauthammer fails to point out some salient facts that are important for his readers to have a more complete picture.
As admitted by a representative of The American Petroleum Institute on The Ed Schultz radio show, the American oil and gas industry currently has over 6,000 leases on 84 million acres of federal lands. These are existing leases which are either not being explored or oil has been found and the oil companies have capped the wells and are not pumping.
On the same show, two petroleum engineers stated it is common practice for oil companies to drill wells, find oil and then cap the wells to bank them for the future when worldwide oil supplies become even more scarce.
Recent legislation in Congress to force the oil companies to explore for and pump oil that is discovered or lose their leases to someone who will explore and pump oil was filibustered to defeat by Senate Republicans. Republicans doing the bidding of the oil industry is nothing new.
Also, Mr. Krauthammer and his ilk shout about drilling on the continental shelf or in ANWR with claims that no wells "suffered a significant spill" due to Hurricane Katrina and Rita. I presume it depends on how you define "significant."
A September 16, 2005, article in The Guardian newspaper stated the following: "The oil pollution in the wake of Hurricane Katrina could be among the worst recorded in North America, officials trying to coordinate the clean up say."
A July 23 story on Washingtonpost.com stated that "[t]he hurricanes destroyed 113 oil rigs, according to the government's Minerals Management Service, and damaged 457 pipelines. The resulting oil spills were large enough to be seen from space, according to several reports."
Misinformation continues to be the dish that makes Mr. Krauthammer famous.
Regrettably, it also remains the pabulum most often served to the American people by Mr. Krauthammer and his ilk.
Tom Bartlett-Svehla
Mundelein