A Threat To Security

From Investors Business Daily:

Posted 1/30/2006
Energy: Sens. John Sununu and John McCain are right to question America's reliance on foreign fuel. If barriers to U.S. drilling and nuclear power weren't so bad, we wouldn't see such oil-fueled menaces. This must change.

Right now, it's easier for big oil companies to drill in faraway places such as Nigeria, Russia and Iran than get a permit to drill in the U.S.

That's why we don't have many options when an unbalanced dictator such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez taunts his No. 1 customer as a "perverse, murderous, genocidal, immoral empire" and calls on the world's leftists to "bring it down" — as Chavez did last weekend.

He knows he has us over a barrel because our country is virtually off-limits to new drilling.
While 31% of total U.S. land is federal, about 78% of America's known oil reserves and 62% of its natural gas reserves are on that land, making it pretty much a federal issue, and plenty of legislators are to blame.

McCain called it right when he told Fox News last week: "We better understand the vulnerabilities that our economy, and our very lives have when we're dependent on Iranian mullahs and wackos in Venezuela." In response, Venezuela's vice president, a radical leftist and friend of terrorist Carlos the Jackal, told McCain to "go to hell."

Sununu put his finger on the flip side of the problem when he criticized New Hampshire's rush to get cut-rate fuel in the absence of adequate supply.

"Hugo Chavez has used the recent spike in heating oil costs as an opportunity to grandstand on the world stage," Sununu said. "He is selling Venezuela's assets at cut-rate prices while his country languishes in poverty and essential infrastructure crumbles. This is a disgrace, and New Hampshire should take no part in such a tragic and misguided charade."

Is it a coincidence that high oil prices have created more than a few "wackos" out there?
Chavez is the poster boy for oil-powered consolidation of internal power and mischief abroad, as McCain said. But so is Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is an even worse threat. There are several warring African fiefdoms run by oil-profit-gorged tyrants. And it's no secret that Russians have lost many of their freedoms under Vladimir Putin as oil prices rise.

As the U.S. expends blood and treasure to spread democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, it makes little sense to see our imported-oil habit undercutting the effort. As we've noted before, we believe strongly in the free market — but the market for oil, dominated as it is by a handful of collusive oil-producing countries, isn't free.

Congress, so far, has been little help. Energy insiders say the worst opponents to drilling and diversification in Congress are from the New England corridor, with Sen. Edward Kennedy, Sen. John Kerry, Rep. Bill Delahunt and others blocking any legislation that will open up more of our offshore and interior to drilling.

Some, such as Delahunt, are little more than slavish apologists for Chavez. He was the first to accept Chavez's "charity" of cheap heating oil for select constituents in Massachusetts while voting against every major energy measure to lower energy prices and reduce the influence of Venezuela's dictator.

The Kennedy clan was in on the same Checkbook Chavismo through the family's Citizen's Energy Corp. These are the same people who veto natural gas pipelines through wintry New England and halt wind-powered farms near pricey real estate areas that just happen to be in their view.

That's why U.S. companies have been driven offshore, and with them a large chunk of U.S. GDP. It's not just Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that's out-of-bounds. About 90% of the U.S.'s energy-rich Outer Continental Shelf is off limits to our own companies.

It's no exaggeration to call this economic issue a matter of national security, no less so than any other nonterrorist threat we face. It needs to be addressed with urgency.

Based on what we've heard, President Bush will outline our energy choices in Tuesday's State of the Union speech. In it, Bush is expected to push tax breaks on new technologies such as fuel cells, wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. That's a good start.

Some will no doubt be upset that Bush isn't trying to impose new taxes on energy use. What they perhaps don't understand, but Bush does, is the last thing Americans want — or need — is another tax.

We're glad to see Bush recognizes the urgency of this issue and is willing to take action. We only wish Congress would do the same.