John McCain is running a TV ad in Michigan that blames Barack Obama for the high price of gasoline and claims that McCain is the one person who knows how to solve the problem of America’s dependence on foreign oil. McCain’s solution is simple: drill more oil wells in the USA.
I have a few issues with this ad. To begin with, Obama, as a first-term US senator, cannot be to blame for the high price of gas. As far as I can tell, Obama has been a do-nothing senator; he seems to have spent most of his time and energy plotting a run for the White House. Perhaps the point of the McCain ad is more that Congress is blocking action on more US drilling, and that Obama’s party is currently controlling Congress. OK, but McCain has been in the senate a long time, much longer than Obama, and there were years when both Congress and the White House were in Republican control. Yet the ban on drilling in certain off-shore sites and wild life reserves remained in place.
Another problem is the ad’s apparent claim that only McCain knows how to solve the crisis. It’s exact wording is that “one man knows” the solution. Why does it have to say that? To me, this is part of the dangerous “cult of personality” politics that has been becoming more and more prevalent in US politics. I don’t know how far back cult of personality politics go, but for US presidents, I’d argue it started with FDR. Before that, we had a lot of stodgy presidents. Of course, it is no coincidence that FDR was the first US president to exploit modern media effectively. It was the radio then. Now it is mostly TV and the Internet. When we can see and hear our political leaders, we don’t want them to be stodgy or unattractive. We don’t want thinkers because thinkers are boring and they might challenge us to think. We want do-ers, just like in the movies. We want heroes, or at least rock stars. Or we want inspirational speakers. We want that one special person who knows all the answers, who is always right. I am not blaming John McCain or the Republicans for the cult of personality approach. Obama is the perfect example of it. But to suggest that only McCain has the answer is to suggest that he has some special, supernatural gift of seeing. I don’t think so.
I especially don’t think so when McCain’s unique insight produces “drill more oil wells here” as the way to solve the energy crisis. For that idea, you need a special gift? As insights go, it falls short of messianic. Let me ask, who will drill these dozens or hundreds or thousands of new oil wells? From what I have read, there is not an over-abundance of drilling rigs and drilling crews ready to pock-mark America with new wells. Quite the opposite. Large oil companies are multi-national. They are producing enough oil right now to satisfy the world’s needs — albeit at a high market price. The big, multi-nationals don’t care about “America’s dependence of foreign oil.” What they care about is producing as much crude as possible as cheaply as possible while getting it to market efficiently and earning the highest price they can. If they can earn massive profits from the wells they already operate around the world, why would they suddenly flock back to the US? Because the new president asked them nicely?
Some independent, wild-cat companies might want to start sinking wells here and there and everywhere. Americans would apparently go for that idea as long as “everywhere” did not include their own neighborhood and as long as the increased drilling and refining resulted in significantly reduced gas prices. As soon as proposals for drilling and refinery-building get specific, they are apt to meet with strong local opposition. For instance, a recent poll taken in my home state found that people supported more domestic oil drilling — but not in the Great Lakes. Not in our Great Lakes.
Go mess up some other shoreline.
However, in spite of environmental concerns, many large and small companies do pump a lot of crude from American wells still. Domestic production is already increasing. According to an article in our local newspaper this past weekend, oil companies are even opening up old, capped wells in southeast Michigan — including several within a 10-minute drive from my house. It is now economically feasible to operate wells that only produce two or three barrels of oil per day. This is because of the high price of crude on the world market. At today’s oil prices, uncapping old, low-producing wells is an easy way to make money. The same logic would probably lead to more drilling in currently protected areas of the United States were they to be opened up. But would this lead to cheaper oil and gas? The whole point is that oil production is increasing in the US because the price is high.
Interestingly, the oil tycoon and Republican businessman T. Boone Pickens has come out with a plan to end America’s dependence on oil. He has been promoting his plan on TV and the Internet. His premise is that we cannot drill our way out of the crisis:
America uses a lot of oil. Every day 85 million barrels of oil are produced around the world. And 21 million of those are used here in the United States.
That’s 25% of the world’s oil demand. Used by just 4% of the world’s population.
Can’t we just produce more oil?
World oil production peaked in 2005. Despite growing demand and an unprecedented increase in prices, oil production has fallen over the last three years. Oil is getting more expensive to produce, harder to find and there just isn’t enough of it to keep up with demand.
The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone.
(The Pickens Plan)
Pickens goes on to argue that “the United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power.” He also is big on natural gas, which burns cleaner than gasoline and is located in abundance in North America. I’m not necessarily sold on all the details of the Pickens Plan, but it seems more clear headed than the McCain plan.
Pickens is not running for office, so he can afford to think.
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