TIME TO START DRILLING
OPEC's acting secretary general was quoted yesterday as saying that crude oil could hit $80 a barrel within two years. Gasoline prices in the past few days have shot up 30 cents a gallon, to around $2.09 in the Midwest for the cheap stuff. Oil is at $53 a barrel right now....imagine what a gallon of gasoline will cost when it hits $80. It's still not the most expensive it has ever been, but it could be cheaper.
Yet there is a solution to this. It's called producing our own oil, and not relying on OPEC for so much of it. It's time to send the oil rigs north, to start drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR,) where, by some estimates, there are between 6 and 16 billion barrels of oil. The area where the drilling would occur is but 8% of the entire refuge. The other 92% wouldn't be touched. Time to start drilling for oil.
Next, it's time to start building refineries. Lots of 'em. Big, huge, smelly gasoline refineries, where enough capacity exists to offset the summer driving season squeeze. That will also bring prices down. And last but not least, it's time for the EPA and all 50 states to settle on a single gasoline blend to be used year round...to stop the nonsensical practice of requiring oil companies to make 50 different blends of gasoline.
Of course, it's unlikely any of this will happen. Perhaps when gas hits $3 or $4 a gallon, people will start to think about it. Just maybe.
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