Letters: Hedgecock on oil prices

While Roger Hedgecock’s recent column blaming President Obama for high gas prices (“Obama’s gas prices, Opinion, March 13) feeds into the hysterical conspiracy theory that Obama is trying to wreck America, the real culprit is the free market.

Financial players are reacting to Middle Eastern uncertainty, just as free market theory predicts. Oil and gas prices would be rising, no matter U.S. oil and gas production. We could lower world oil prices for a while by drilling on government land and removing environmental protection standards. Even if the U.S. increased oil production, the free market would offer this bounty to the world, not our nation. Perhaps Mr. Hedgecock doesn’t like the free market after all? – Lars K. Staack, Poway

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Roger Hedgecock’s “Obama’s gas prices” is predictable in its simple-mindedness and contradictory logic. By blaming the president for the current run-up in gas prices, while giving the oil companies a free pass on the entire issue, he pretty much disassociates himself with the free market principles that Republican claim to hold so dear.

Oil is a worldwide commodity, sold in American dollars at a price to meet worldwide demand. The U.S. has 2 percent of the world’s oil resources, yet uses 20 percent of the world’s oil. There is easily enough oil in the world, for now, to meet worldwide demand. As demand in the world, particularly in China and India, continues to grow, the only thing that will bring oil prices down would be a worldwide glut in supply. OPEC limits its production to avoid such a scenario, as low oil prices are not in its interest.

For the sake of argument, let’s say the president decided to give the oil companies access to every drillable inch of the United States for oil production. Does anyone really believe that Exxon would really start to drill so much oil out of the ground that the worldwide market would be oversupplied to the point where prices would fall? Why would they do that? A drop in prices would mean a drop in profits, and Exxon’s shareholders would fire the board of directors in a heartbeat. And what on earth would lead anyone to believe that American-produced oil will be kept in America and sold at a lower price than the worldwide market price? The only way that could happen would be with some kind of government regulation of the oil industry. That has to hurt Hedgecock’s brain just thinking about it.

The Keystone XL pipeline is another of Hedgecock’s myths that has no future benefit to the United States. The Keystone tar sands are a disgusting mess, which will require almost as much energy to refine as they have capacity to deliver in return as a motor fuel. The only reason they want to blight a 2,000-mile chunk down the middle of America to the Gulf of Mexico is so they can put it on a ship and take it to China.

The future of humanity is going to depend on our ability to access unlimited supplies of non-carbon-based energy. Although this would seem a utopian kind of notion, it is no more outlandish that the thought of sending a man to the moon was in 1962. President Obama understands this, and has taken a big-picture approach to this for the benefit of future generations. Sure, there have been some failures, and there will be more. But to give up on the future, we are not only failing ourselves, but we would be failing our grandchildren. Ask yourself, what kind of world do we want to leave behind? — Steve Hartman, Poway


