Experts Say Gasoline Prices Wouldn’t be So High if Obama Would Approve Keystone Pipeline
Do you remember the 2008 presidential campaign, when candidate Barack Obama constantly attacked President George W. Bush for high gas prices?
Well guess what? Six years later prices as the pump are still hovering around the $4 per gallon mark, and President Obama continues to resist efforts to make the U.S. more energy independent.
Unless, of course, the term “energy independent” means a national reliance on green energy. But green energy is not nearly developed enough to power our economy. We still need a bigger and less expensive supply of fossil fuels if we hope to drive down energy costs that are sucking the life out of the economic recovery
In a recent column in Forbes magazine, two oil industry experts say the president’s reluctance to approve the Keystone pipeline project is contributing to the problem.
From Newsmax.com:
According to a column … by Kathleen Harnett White and Vance Ginn, experts at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, recent geopolitical instability and disruptions and bottlenecks in the supply of Brent crude oil from the North Sea have driven up costs for American refiners, leading to higher retail prices at the pump.
“If President Obama approved construction of the Keystone XL’s northern leg, more of the relatively cheaper WTI (West Texas Intermediate crude) oil could reach refineries along the Gulf Coast. This would reduce the risk premium that geopolitical instability attaches to oil prices and thus lower the gasoline price,” the authors wrote.
White and Ginn say that only a sufficient infrastructure, such as the one provided by the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, could harness America’s vast energy resources and processing capacity so as to stabilize prices and provide North American energy independence.
But hey, we’re dealing with a president who does not want to increase domestic production of fossil fuels, regardless of how much the lowered cost would benefit the economy and citizens. Obama wants people to drive less, thereby lowering carbon emissions and slowing global warming (at least according to the progressive theory that he embraces). He also wants to facilitate the development of green energy, which is slowed by market forces when there is an adequate supply of traditional energy.
In other words, the president is willing to tolerate high gasoline prices, hurting consumers and choking off the recovery, to implement his ultimate goal of developing a green-powered nation. But it’s way too soon to rely too heavily on alternative forms of energy, and our nation needs lower fuel costs and more jobs right now.
Citizens should demand that the president approve the pipeline, and do whatever else he can do to increase the oil supply, even if that means accepting the reality that we’re going to remain reliant on fossil fuels for some years into the future.
The president’s pie-in-the-sky energy goals are laudable, but they’re not worth the price that all of us continue to pay for them.
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