May 20, 2008–Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed up another opportunity to expand our supply of domestically produced energy by voting down a proposal to end the moratorium on shale oil development in Colorado. Shale oil is an energy resource we have in abundance.  All that’s needed is the will to extract it.  The Senate has stood in the way of those efforts and in this instance voted, in committee, to continue its moratorium on the development of this resource in the State of Colorado. There are a trillion (that is Trillion, with a T) barrels of oil locked up and out of reach in geological formations under this continent. The committee vote, was, as it is for most of these energy issues, along straight party lines: 15 Democrats voting against expanding supply and 14 Republicans in favor.
Drilling ANWAR in Alaska. Keeping 85% of our offshore areas off limits to oil companies. Retaining the stranglehold on nuclear power plant construction with 3 years of permitting and 8 of construction bottlenecks. All issues where the Republican minority lines up on one side and Democrats on the other. Republicans have always been in favor of increasing supply, but it wasn’t a top legislative priority for them when they controlled both the Congress and the White House.  Congressional  Democrats, in league with noisy environmental interests, have consistently suffocated these  initiatives to develop additional supplies of enefty in favor of their own agendas of conservation and renewable resources. It’s easy to see where our energy problem begins and ends. Washington D.C
The biggest threat to the United States today is not just the economic havoc that high petroleum prices bring, and the man in the street is very much aware of the pain these high prices can cause, but the very real possibility that we could be denied this critical resource at any price. That we choose to tolerate this existential risk places us all in danger.  Republican lethargy helped get us here, but now  Democratic intransigence, in the form of advocacy for conservation and ‘other’ sources of energy,  stands in the way of a solution.
Conservation is fine, but it is just another way of increasing the supply of energy available by curtailing usage. Logically, if we use less, there will be more energy available at lower prices, and that’s fine reasoning for a few years ago, but we’re no longer the folks who set the prices for energy. Prices are set by the growing demand in places like India and China, countries who are  willing to more and more to meet the needs of their growing population and commerce. Conservation also does little to secure our supplies of energy and keep them safe from those who would want to deny them to us. Increasing our domestic energy resources  is the only thing that will serve us in this regard and until technology shows us how to use hydrogen to run our automobiles or tells us how to harness the sun’s energy at little or no cost, we are in danger. Then there are the ‘other’ sources of energy.
Wistful longing for some form of ëalternative energy’ or ërenewable resources’ will do little to increase the supply we need today. There are no ‘alternatives’ or ‘renewables’  that can provide any significant portion of our energy needs in the near term or even in the foreseeable future. We need to take steps to increase supply now and whatever we do that doesn’t address our ability to produce our own supplies of energy puts us at risk and distracts us from the task at hand.
Drilling in ANWAR. Developing our vast offshore gas and oil potential. Freeing nuclear plant construction from the onerous regulations that extend the process inordinately. Accessing our extensive coal resources. And allowing shale resources to be developed in the State of Colorado are all practical and meaningful steps that we could take tomorrow if we had the will. None of this would add to supply immediately, but doing some or all of them would let the world know we are serious about supplying our own needs and long term prices would begin to adjust accordingly.

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