• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

EDITORIAL: Pay at the Pump: Oil Addiction's Going to Cost This Summer

Posted on: Monday, 17 April 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Apr. 17--The nation's addiction to oil is going to cost us a great deal this summer. And unless we get our craving for crude under some degree of control soon, the pain we're feeling in our wallets will be chronic - even terminal. The dismal irony is that only greater fiscal pain, in the short run, could wean us away from oil and put us on the road toward energy independence. Can anyone - especially politicians in an election year - say "steeper gas taxes" without wincing?

Brace for a series of shocks at the gasoline pumps as the driving season approaches quickly. The brief respite last weekend - oil prices slid Thursday after national crude stocks swelled unexpectedly to the highest level in eight years - isn't likely to last. And the drop in crude prices may not be passed on directly to refined products like gasoline.

A number of factors are combining to put rising pressure on gas prices. Some we could control individually and collectively. Others rise from civil unrest in oil-producing nations beyond anyone's control. And some result from bad planning or manipulative greed.

The list is as diverse as it is bewildering: Rebel attacks in Nigeria that have cut a quarter of that major oil-producing nation's output; a brewing civil war in Chad, an African nation that just began to export oil from its billion-barrel reserve in 2003; tremors in the oil markets over the increasingly dangerous standoff between the West and Iran, a top oil exporter; Venezuela's threat to cut off oil exports to the United States in ideological opposition to the Bush administration; inexcusable shortages in the United States of ethanol, which is required by law to be mixed with gasoline in summer months to reduce air pollution; tight refinery capacity in the Gulf in the aftermath of the Katrina and Rita hurricane disasters.

And that's just for starters. Don't forget to add American auto buyers' continued appetite for enormous gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks, most of which are driven not on rutted muddy country roads but on suburban highways by single commuters, or to shopping malls and soccer games.

The iron law of supply and demand rules. Oil supplies are limited. Demand is rising. The only sure way to suppress demand - and generate a national push for alternative fuels - is to raise gasoline taxes. Are drivers ready to accept them? Do their representatives have the guts to risk their political necks over them?

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

More News in this Category