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opinion coleman
Sunday, May 11, 2008
N.M. Senators Don't Take A Holiday From Oil Reality
By Michael Coleman
Journal Washington Bureau
If today's gas prices didn't hurt so much, it would be almost funny to watch members of Congress roll out their politically-motivated “gas-price relief” plans.
Instead, it's just a little sad.
Under intense pressure from voters, leaders of both parties are engaging in predictable political theatre as they try to reassure us they are doing everything they can to ease our pain at the pump.
Most of the major ideas we've heard before: Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a massive windfall profits tax on oil companies, and don't forget John McCain's and Hillary Rodham Clinton's desperate “gas tax holiday” proposal that would decimate the highway fund and put 30 bucks in our pockets this summer.
The most glaring problems with these proposed “solutions” is that none of them can pass the narrowly-divided Senate and none of them would have a significant impact on the prices we pay now. Virtually all of the short-term fixes proposed by Congress would have little-to-no impact on prices, and they know it. This is election-year posturing by both parties, plain and simple.
Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Pete Domenici, the Democratic chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, have stood with their party's leaders as they touted these various plans. They are, after all, politicians and members of larger political parties. But they've also been honest enough to admit publicly that Congress really can't affect gas prices much.
As they see it, China, India and other growing industrialized nations are gobbling up huge chunks of the world's oil supply and there is nothing we can do about it.
The one thing that we could do to help relieve our gas price pain is use less gas, but very, very few of our esteemed national leaders — with the notable exception of Bingaman — has suggested it.
Bingaman has consistently, if not loudly (that's just not his style), urged all of us to conserve. Bingaman reiterated his view in an interview with me this month.
“In the short-term, the largest impact anyone can have is in reducing consumption,” Bingaman said.
Of course, it's not a popular political position to take. Vice President Dick Cheney famously — and irresponsibly — dismissed conservation as a “personal virtue” a few years ago. But with gas creeping toward $4 per gallon and some energy analysts predicting it could go much higher, driving less or driving more fuel efficient cars suddenly seems like plain old good sense.
During a Senate floor speech, Bingaman said Americans could relieve at least a little pain at the pump by driving 5 mph slower, which would boost fuel efficiency by 7.5 percent.
Some scoffed at that suggestion — kind of like when Jimmy Carter suggested lowering the thermostat and putting on a sweater back in the 1970s — but think of the effect if everyone did it. It would save millions of gallons of gas, boost international supply and perhaps eventually reduce, or at least help stabilize, prices.
Domenici hasn't endorsed driving slower or banged any drums for conservation, but in a sense, he's actually led on the issue, too.
When Domenici chaired the energy committee back in 2005, he was among the first — and it took him awhile — prominent Republicans in Congress to come around to increased fuel-economy standards for automobiles. And Congress actually adopted them, raising the minimum standard for cars and light trucks to 35 mpg.
Domenici's staff also pointed out that the bill contained a record $1.7 billion to support renewable energy research. And along with drilling in ANWR, his proposal last week contained a request for $25 million in loans for advanced battery research.
“No one is disagreeing about the need to conserve, what we seem to have a disagreement about is whether we should do that exclusively or also increase production,” said Matt Letourneau, Domenici's spokesman on the energy committee.
In recent conversations, Domenici, who is unabashedly pro-oil production, has also made it clear to me that oil, or gasoline, is not the wave of the future. He has said that eventually electric-powered cars might be our best bet for weaning ourselves off of oil and mitigating climate change. But for the foreseeable future, oil is the only way to keep our cars and our economy running.
And that's why Domenici, and Bingaman, believe we also need to produce more. To the frustration of some environmentalists, you'll never hear Bingaman trash the oil and gas industry. After all, oil and gas fuels the American economy, pays the bills in New Mexico, and contributes heavily to both his and Domenici's campaigns.
Bingaman supports drilling along the outer-continental shelf on the east and west coasts, and some other domestic areas. But as chairman of the energy committee, he says he is reluctant to open ANWR, which has become a symbol of the environmental movement. He and Domenici differ on this polarizing subject and the benefits of drilling there, but with Democrats in control of Congress, ANWR will remain off-limits.
“We are not going to drill our way out of this problem,” Bingaman said.
E-mail to mcoleman@abqjournal.com
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