Maggie's Farm

Until the day when the Hand of God reaches down and smacks some unsuspecting inventor-type in the back of the head and gives him the secret of nuclear fusion, we are damn fools to remain under the oily thumbs of Arab petro-terrorists.

The facts concerning our situation are as clear as they are scary. Currently, we have few if any friends in the oil producing world. They'd as soon cut us off completely if they thought India or China had the capacity to store and process their crude, and the dollars to pay for it. We have no friends in the consuming world. There is not one nation on this planet who would allow us to lick the lining of their oil barrels for just a few drops more crude.

What does this teach us, boys and girls? It's every nation for itself, and America invented "getting ours." It's time we showed the world why we are the top dog.

The previously mentioned suggestions are all good ones, and we should get busy and do them all. The Feds surely don't need the tax money; they'll just figure out new and increasingly stupid ways to waste it. If wqe can't convince them to do without it, we should make darn sure that every penny of it goes towards exploration, recovery and processing of American Crude. Not another penny for exploration and drilling in Nicaragua until every barrel of our own local oil has gone through the tanks of some road-boat Buick or long-haul Kenworth.

Ethanol? What a joke! Ethanol in auto fuel blends is a waste of time and money. Archer-Daniels Midland and Conagra might see some bennefit in it, but there are all too few vehicles that can run on 80/20 blends of ethanol/gasoline. Less than that amounts to little more than full employment for corn farmers. If the government is serious about having us use ethanol, then lift the 58 cent per gallon tarriff that currently prevents the importation of foreign (Brazilian) ethanol. They've been making it longer than we have; theey might be able to teach us something.

It's time to tell the Greeners "thank you very much for your concern, now sit down and shut up." American capacity to refine the crude we pump ourselves or import form elsewhere has been stifled for three decades because there has not been one new refinery built in all that time. Even if we were able to increase the amount of crude we could import, we have nowhere near the capacity to turn it into gasoline or diesel fuel.

Nowhere in American-controled territory should be off-limits to exploration and production. Not middle America, not the Alaskan North Slope, not ANWR, not the off-shore Left Coast, or the east coast, for that matter. Not the Florida Keys or the deep Gulf fields off Lousiana. If the Cubans figure that drilling 45 niles south of Florida is worth their while, we should be drilling 40 miles south.

We can either be our own worst enemy in this, or we can become our own heroes. If we don't begin to look out for ourselves, the days of $75/barrel oil are going to be fond memories in the not-too distant future.