BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR

Editor's Note: The following is an opinion piece written by Dr. Gerhard, who is Principal Geologist of the Kansas Geological Survey.

Stop whining about the cost of gasoline. Stop whining because you have gotten what you asked for. For at least three decades, Americans have asked that the federal lands upon which they recreate or gaze be protected from any human influence. Your current president has indulged your whims with executive orders removing ever more earth resources from supplying you with your gasoline, in order to supply you with more undisturbed scenic vistas. The last two presidents have made all of the lands off-shore the west coast and the east coast, and lands along the north coast, the Rocky Mountain front in Montana, and in southern Utah unavailable for resource exploration and supply. Approximately 65% of western on-shore federal lands are unavailable to resource production.

That's what you asked for. You got it, and maybe before this administration leaves office, they will make good on their promise to close many other federal lands and designate more "wilderness." That is a political choice. That you have made that choice is your right. But there is a cost.

American oil production, once the greatest in the world, has fallen to less than 45% of what you use, and is continuing to drop rapidly. Earth resources like oil and water occur where geology tells them to occur, not where we might most like to have them. The lands you have asked to be off limits to energy production are off limits. Many of the resources needed to counter the OPEC price controls you resent are located in those off-limit lands.

The OPEC embargo of 1973 occurred when we imported about 35% of our petroleum. Massive capital outlays and efforts increased domestic petroleum supplies to over 10,500,000 barrels per day, cutting our imports to less than 27% of demand by1985. Over 4000 drilling rigs were drilling in the late 1970's and early 1980's to drive up production and satisfy domestic demand, cutting OPEC influence. Politically inspired price cuts through Saudi Arabian overproduction crashed the oil market in1985. Consequent declines in drilling dropped the number of operating rigs to about 720 in 1986. We are still about that number, as disincentives to find and produce domestic oil supplies have continued to discourage exploration.

We now import over 55% of our demand, and national production has dropped to a little over six million barrels of oil a day and about two million barrels of natural gas liquids (produced as a byproduct of natural gas production). The major oil companies have left the United States, finding lower risk areas to invest their money. The family farmers of the oil business are our remaining hope.

In the meantime, we fought a war on the Arabian Peninsula to protect our import supply. The United States has had an energy policy since the Revolutionary War: cheap energy at any price. Ask the families of those who died in the Gulf War.

When President Clinton promised last week to do things to alleviate the cost of energy, his promises were token, not timely, and not effective. He did not promise to make any more oil available to you by producing more. That's what it will take. The global economy is expanding and we find, as predicted, that other countries and other people want a share of the oil we have been consuming with abandon, and at ridiculously low costs. We are now in competition for access to world oil supplies. China is building its military machine to protect what it considers to be its Asian supply lines, just as we protected our Arabian Peninsula supplies in the Gulf War.

Over the next twenty years we will be competing for our energy with the rest of the world. We won't run out of oil in the foreseeable future, but we will be paying a lot more for it as we try to outbid others for an ever scarcer resource.

Stop whining because you are having to pay Third World people a fair price for their resources. For every policy choice, there is a cost to pay. The cost of restricting access to American resources is that Americans pay more for their imported resources. Those who are least able to pay the cost sometimes are the worst affected, as in this case. But rejoice that you are exporting your wealth to those who need it more than you do. Besides, the inflation-adjusted price of gasoline is less than it was 15 years ago.

Stop whining. You've gotten what you asked for.

Lee Gerhard
Lawrence KS
Dr. Gerhard is Principal Geologist of the Kansas Geological Survey.