Inviting Another Gas-Price Crisis

Feb. 7–Surely no one has forgotten the $4-a-gallon gasoline costs that afflicted our country just a few months ago.

It got so bad that the American people demanded — and Congress and the Bush administration delivered — measures to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by promoting domestic production.

Congress finally opened up some offshore drilling, and President George W. Bush allowed the sale of oil and natural gas exploration leases on a tiny part of the vast and largely empty government lands in Utah.

Those steps sent a message to our sometimes hostile overseas oil suppliers that we were starting to take our energy independence seriously. That message, combined with collapsing demand from the recession, forced down prices, and residents in and around Chattanooga are paying less than $2 per gallon for gasoline today.

But with the immediate crisis over and public attention diverted to other issues, the Obama administration is moving rapidly to close off new avenues of domestic oil production.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has reneged on most of the leases that were awarded to bidders for oil and gas drilling. The Bureau of Land Management already had received checks from winning bidders to pay for the leases, but Secretary Salazar ordered the agency not to cash them.

That is bad on two counts. First, it denies consumers access to energy that could cut down on our need for foreign oil. Second, it denies vast revenue to the U.S. Treasury that would have been generated from the sale of the leases and from royalties on oil and gas production.

And for what? The leases would have permitted energy exploration on only one-seventieth of the public lands in Utah. The parcels were not in national parks, and it defies reason to claim they would have spoiled the arid region.

That reversal is bad enough, but the administration and its liberal allies in Congress also may reverse legislation allowing limited, environmentally responsible offshore drilling.

Now, when gas prices are relatively low, is when the United States ought to be taking firm steps toward energy independence. It’s a shame that it may take another crisis –with gas prices perhaps $4, $5 or more — to get us back on that sensible path.