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Last week I actually got a rare opportunity to ask the ever-elusive Jeanne Shaheen an unscripted question when she took phone calls on our friend Judy’s morning radio program in New London. I explained that even with new technology on the horizon, many people, myself included, are stuck with our present automobiles for the foreseeable future, thus remaining dependent on oil-based products for transportation. She responded with her standard rhetoric, filled with blather about ending subsidies for oil companies and investing in new technology, as if that helps me right now. I think she probably had words for "the speculators" if memory serves. It’s what all her comrades are saying, so I’m sure she did too.
I then pressed her about the foreign-dependence aspect and asked why we don’t simply allow more drilling. Her answer, of course, came straight from the latest Democratic politician talking points: “But what about the existing leases? We need to demand that the oil companies make full use of the leases they presently hold before talking about new ones. Blah blah blah.” This meme goes hand in hand with recent drivel coming from NH’s Second District Congressman, Democrat Paul Hodes. In a statement following President Bush’s announced end of the drilling moratorium, Hodes declared,
“Before we expand offshore drilling sites for big oil, they should drill on the 68 million acres of land on which they currently hold leases and permits. I am co-sponsoring legislation that would require oil companies to drill on that land or lose their leases.”
“We need real solutions to record high gas prices for New Hampshire families not more of the same failed policies that got us into this crisis with record prices at the pump and record profits for big oil.”
Finding more oil here instead of importing it from somewhere else is a “failed policy?” It seems to me that if anything, the present situation clearly demonstrates that not drilling for the last umpteen years is the real “failed policy”.
Not to be left out, our other Democratic Congresswoman weighed in too. One wonders why they all didn’t just save time and issue a single, joint statement instead of replicating each other over and over:
"Lifting the ban on offshore drilling is incredibly shortsighted and will do nothing to solve our nation’s long term energy crisis. It is unfortunate President Bush continues to focus on sound-bites over solutions. The oil companies need to “get to work” and start drilling on the 68 million acres of land they currently have leased. I believe we must rein in speculators who are just looking to make a buck…"
On Tuesday, I participated in another bloggers’ conference call with experts from the oil industry and was able to ask them about this very issue. As I expected, the Democrat chorus is based mostly on a lack of knowledge about what’s really happening in an industry as complicated as anything on earth. Said American Petroleum Institute (API) CEO Red Cavaney,
“These are arguments that are put forth by people who don’t understand how the industry operates. First of all, and I think this is sort of commonsensical, the Creator or evolution, whichever you want to tag, didn’t put hydrocarbons – oil and natural gas, specifically – every place on the globe. History would show you, if you went back and looked at the leases that the federal government has let over a period of time, that, far and away, the large, large majority of leases have proven not to contain hydrocarbons in sufficient commodities that you could commercialize it.”
“When you buy a lease, you effectively could be buying what can be termed a pig in a poke. You don’t know if there’s oil there, but you’re going to pay the federal government just for the ability to be able to look. But what’s interesting about this argument that there’s all this oil out there, it’s being made by the same people who, if you go back and check their records, will probably have said, no, there isn’t enough oil to justify going forward. So that’s a delightful opportunity for somebody to contrast what is mixed messages and trying to have it both ways by some folks.”
And that is the difference between Jeanne Shaheen and Senator Sununu: rhetoric versus reality.
Senator Sununu (GG file photo)