GOP: DSI*

The price of gas is rising thanks to the number one GOP sponsor: the oil and gas industry. Thank goodness they have come to the rescue of the GOP just when it looked as if they were becoming issueless. Here it is still winter and the rumors are beginning to be marketed by industry analysts who dare to suggest that the rise is because summer is coming. Ha! Other factors mentioned are the Strait of Hormuz, Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, a new European recession’s failure to materialize, and the U.S. recovery. The main factor, however, is the deliberate jacking up of prices by U.S. refiners.
All the other possible reasons for the current rise in price are just so much hogwash. The oil and gas industry wants a Republican in the White House so that it can return to the days of Dick Cheney and the free-for-all drilling that went on during the “W” administration, “W” standing for Windfall, not wind power. The industry wants to “frack” to its heart’s content without worrying about being convicted of damaging water supplies by being required to list the heretofore proprietary chemicals they use in the process. They want to drill-baby-drill on as many public lands as possible without consequence or responsibility and with maximum profit.
Republican candidates are now shifting their focus to gas prices as a way of criticizing the Obama administration for actually making the industry drill safely. In the name of job creation (temporary as it always is) and increasing supply (until the price of crude is so low it does not make economic sense to keep drilling), the GOP is now sounding the alarm to open up public lands for yet more drilling, even though we are already currently drilling and extracting on domestic soil at an all time high level….under the Obama administration.
What the industry fails to mention is how much water it takes to “frack,” the nickname given to hydraulic fracturing. Anywhere from 400,000 to a million gallons of water is required per well. In the East, where water is plentiful, water usage may not be a huge issue. However, in the West, where water is gold, using it to extract oil and gas is of questionable overall merit. Any true cost-benefit analysis would weigh the impact of water usage against the gain in energy and conclude that as water becomes increasingly scarce, its value for the maintenance of life itself transcends all other uses. After all, water is ultimately more important and valuable than oil and gas, for it is the primary source of life on this planet. Ramping up drilling, especially in the West, for the sake of rising gas prices is only a short term fix, not a long term solution.
Therefore, when you hear another GOP politician call for more unregulated drilling, have a glass of water. Given their plans, in the future it may begin to cost you as much for that glass of water as you are currently paying at the pump for a gallon of gas.

*Desperately Seeking Issues