It’s time to lift drilling ban in U.S.
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, July 16, 2008
CORRECTION: An editorial published in Wednesday’s edition contained an error of fact.
Some petroleum products were in fact spilled in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of damage by Hurricane Katrina. However, these were deemed as “minor” releases by an independent study done one behalf of the Department of Interior and the spills occurred with equipment and transportation pipelines, not subsurface wells.
We regret the error and are happy to set the record straight.
Ask any 16-year-old boy and he’ll tell you there’s something special about getting your driver’s license.
It’s the freedom of the open road and a spirit of independence only possible behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.
Once the ignition is turned and the wheels begin rolling, another junky is hooked — hooked on foreign oil.
Like persons addicted to illicit drugs, our nation has been in denial for decades.
America must snap out of this oil-induced malaise and realize that our dependency on foreign oil makes us vulnerable for attack.
Watch the national media and see the price of crude oil rocket to historic levels one day; then it falls a bit the next day; then it’s back up again.
The markets are volatile and so is the world in which we live.
Oil and gas prices are at record levels, yet we’re barely doing anything about it.
We should be drilling for oil in almost every nook and cranny of our country.
We should be plowing every resource possible into alternative fuels and coal technologies. We’re allegedly the “Saudi Arabia” of coal, yet we don’t maximize its energy potential.
Our nation’s survival is more important than some puritanical decision not to drill. The largest natural disaster known to man — Hurricane Katrina — tore through the coast and not a single drop of oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
We have the technology to drill safely; we just don’t have the guts to admit that we’re addicted to foreign oil and, more important, do something about it.
If our national political leaders can ever put aside petty partisan disputes and really get down to the business of leading our nation, we could stop the addiction during the next generation.
Until then, each time another pimple-faced teen smiles for the camera and is handed his new license, another generation of addicts is born.