Gas Prices, A Major Campaign Issue? Any Possible Solutions? continued...

Part 2

Now we can focus on some offered solutions by our politicians. First we will start with the Republican presumptive nominee John McCain. His original solution was to lift the federally imposed gas tax for the summer. Great Idea right? Well before we crown McCain as the solver of this huge global problem of oil price, lets fully examine what is being offered.

As mentioned in my previous piece, the federal government tax accounts for only about 10% of the price we pay per gallon of gasoline. This would mean that if we average the nations per gallon gasoline cost at $4.00, each of us would be saving a whopping $0.04 on every gallon! That's right a whole 4 CENTS. If we were to add that up for about 17 gallons of gas (an average of what fills a gas tank in a sedan) we would be saving a whopping $2.72 when we fill up (total cost would be about $68.00) and about $0.68 per gallon of gas we purchase! Is this really an answer to our oil problems. Some make the argument that "A little relief can go along way." Apparently not. You would be lucky to get about 5 miles with the serious savings with this tax free idea ($0.68 would by about 0.17 gallon of gas and sedans get about 32 highway miles per gallon so that amounts to a little more than 5 miles).

Now Senator McCain, and many other Republican elected officials support off shore oil drilling. To tell you the truth I was almost doped by this idea. There is currently a ban on new off shore drilling in areas of our country such as Florida and Alaska for preservation of the wildlife and environment. Republicans have been pushing to remove this ban so that we can drill and have our own oil. In other words if we increase the supply of oil available we will force the prices of gas to decline somewhat. This sounds like a great idea and for a minute I was on board. That is until I did my research. It turns out that the oil companies in this country ALREADY HAVE PERMISSION TO DRILL IN AREAS OF THE COUNTRY and guess what THEY DON'T! There are many areas of the country that are open for drilling. Acres and acres of land are available to start the processing and refining of oil. Oil companies own leases to this land and they do absolutely nothing with it and from a business side why would they. If oil became over abundant in this country then the price of oil would plummet and the multi-billion dollar industry would become a multi-million dollar industry. Huge losses for the oil companies! So why are they pushing for the life of the federal ban on offshore drilling? It turns out that they can own acres of land, produce no oil until they decide to, in order to keep the prices nice and high, bleeding the American middle class and maintaining the lavish lifestyle of oil company execs.

There is a bill currently being voted on in Congress that, if made into law, would force oil companies to pay fines for not developing and drilling their already leased land. Please visit the website of your U.S. Senators and Congressmen to voice your support for the bill that will force oil companies to use the land they already have leases for drilling.