President Obama's emphasis on impractical, low-density, renewable-energy farms and his plan to dismantle the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel storage facility are mistakes the new Romney energy plan could have exploited. Instead, the Romney plan is mostly a rehash of Newt Gingrich's "drill, baby, drill" scheme for our oceans and public lands, to produce expensive oil that we don't need today.
Oil and gas production has risen steadily during Obama's term, and we are awash in oil and gas. Drilling activity is at high levels. As Maria van der Hoeven, executive director for the International Energy Agency, said on Aug. 17: "The oil market is well supplied."
We still don't have good seismic data off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. So the last thing we need now is a fleet of drill ships poking random, and very expensive, dry holes in the ocean floor. That offshore oil isn't going anywhere, and as Adm. Hyman Rickover once put it: "Fossil fuels resemble capital in the bank. A prudent and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance."
Saudi King Abdullah once said, simply, when talking on the subject of increased production: "I keep no secret from you that when there were some new oil finds, I told them: 'No, leave it in the ground, with grace from God, our children will need it.'"
Rolf Westgard
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St. Paul
