Oops . . . We did it again! $ 4.00 a gallon and rising

When you join the military or are elected to public office you take an oath to protect the country from both foreign and domestic enemies which is part of our Constitution.

Throughout history world powers nearly always fall from within.

We may be going that same route as we look for ways to get involved in all the world’s conflicts when we cannot take care of things on our own home front.  We have invaded Libya to stop another nutcase from killing his own people as we watch over the country’s oil fields without taking anything for our efforts to stop the violence in that country.  It has been that way in all of our Middle Eastern protective missions.

Does that make us a stupid country?  The foreign oil is there for us to take as part payment for helping countries gain freedom from dictators who think nothing of killing their own people.  Within our own borders exists 1,000 to 2,500 years worth oil and gas.  We have hamstrung ourselves from using it and will spend the next 20 years paying for the stupidity of the last 20 years of regulatory incompetence.   Those that talk of ‘saving’ ANWAR’s beauty and pristine landscape by not exploring for oil and gas clearly show that they have no idea what they are talking about.  Saving the caribou herds and other creatures is such a joke to those living here it only emphases how much they have not researched this issues.

I’ve been there and there is not a tree for miles.  The only shade for the caribou is the Alaska Pipeline as you see hundreds of animals standing under it in the summer time as the herds pass back and forth on their constant migration across the northern reaches of Alaska.  The millions pools of water in the area which freeze in winter and the mosquitoes living there are about the only living things in this vast area.  There are a few small native villagers living there but their numbers are so small.

It is remarkable the advances in technology now as the oil companies and drill horizontally from one ‘pad’ out in several directions to capture oil without having several rigs all over the landscape.  The impact to the environmental footprint is minimal.

I almost got off on a tangent so I will return to gas prices and rant about it for awhile.

World oil prices are spiking as Mummar Gaddafi goes on a shooting spree against his own people.  We have hit $ 4.00 a gallon in Anchorage Alaska.  That might be cheap a year from now but it won’t be from a deranged lunatic in the Middle East.  I remember last summer when former Shell CEO John Hofmeister predicted that President Obama’s drilling moratorium alone could result in $ 5 gallon gas prices for American drivers.   

“Politics is destroying our own domestic oil industry,” Hofmeister told CNBC.

Are our priorities totally screwed up?  Think about this for a moment.  A Starbucks venti latte costs the equivalent of $ 23 per gallon, while Budweiser beer runs $ 11 per gallon.  I guess it is all in how you look at things . . . gasoline is cheap compared with other essential fuels.  I have to have my coffee but thank God it is just coffee and not the designer digs at Starbucks or the thousand other java huts scattered all over Anchorage. 

Maybe it’s not so bad . . . my villages in bush Alaska pay around $ 7 to $ 8 dollars a gallon for gasoline or heating oil and if it is scarce the price goes up and these are villages where there is only a subsistence economy with no industry in most places. 

It is hard to get yourself into an equal frame of mind with all the different vehicles having fuel tanks of various sizes.  Instead of talking about cost per tank or percentage of income you pay for gasoline get things to a common place and start talking about dollars per mile to drive your car.

Everyone had calculators on their cell phones so next time you hit the station give this a try.  It is a simple math problem and I’ll give you  a couple examples to see where this is going.

Gas price is $ 4.00 a gallon

I drive a Dodge Durango and I get about 14 miles per gallon.  So the math is like this:  14 miles per gallon divided by $ 4 = 3.5 miles per dollar.

You drive a Toyota Camry or Nissan that gets 25 miles per gallon divided by $ 4 = 6.25 miles per dollar to take you to work or that high priced movie.

That Toyota Prius that gets 46 miles per gallon divided by $ 4 = 11.5 miles per dollar. 

Interesting concept which most of us never thinks of the commute we drive each day to make that mighty dollar we need to keep our lives in balance.  I drive 8 miles to work each way so it costs me $ 2.29 each direction for a total of $ 4.57 for the pleasure of going to work.

I have several coworkers that live in the valley that drive 50 miles each way costing them about $ 150 dollars a week for the opportunity to live out in the country away from the ‘crowds’ here in town.

I guess it is a good thing I don’t drink the Starbucks coffee as it would cost me at least one a day.

There is no doubt that the high fuel prices are hurting the normal working families and put a real dilemma to low income consumers and high energy costs are placing a tax on the economy that slows investment while sending billions of dollars overseas.  The president and Congress talk about new proposals to lower gas prices but nothing seems to happen besides a sound bite to the media.  I guess this helps keep the face and voice in front of the people and when nothing happens they can give us that ‘I tried’ attitude.

In the summer of 2008 the price of gas hit the $ 4 mark in national average by June.  It was election time so everyone was changing their stance on offshore drilling.  It did not matter which side was talking by August they were all on the same wavelength.  Drill, baby, drill was the chant as the whole country went crazy when gas hit 4 dollars a gallon.

We are there now . . . and $ 5 is not that unrealistic to expect in the future.

At what point will it reach before everyone gets to that point where enough is enough?  Will the country revolt like the tea tax days in Boston?  Will the oil company’s record profits be enough to do the humane thing and increase production and lower their price? 

On another tangent . . . what if everyone paid $ 5 a gallon for three years for gas, the oil companies and states lowered their price or taxes and that difference was used to pay down the national debt?

It is workable and could wipe it out in just a few years if the greed of everyone checked to allow the benefits to the American people.  People would pay the price to see the beneficial results knowing it is not going into the pockets of the oil companies or the politicians.

 Ice