Offshore drilling can be a boom to New Jersey
With gasoline over $4 per gallon, what is Congress doing to help American consumers? Some of their ideas are: sue OPEC (How does suing the people who sell oil lower the price?); Democratic senators proposed a carbon tax (which will increase the price of electricity and gasoline); and many Democrats, including Sen. Barack Obama, like the windfall profit tax on oil companies (which would lower their profit, giving them less money for new exploration, resulting in even higher gasoline process). So, in my opinion, the answers that Congress gave to reduce high gasoline prices were wrong, wrong, and wrong.

If you want to reduce the price of anything, you can increase the supply, reduce the demand, or both. American consumers are doing their part by reducing the demand for gasoline by buying less; Congress is doing nothing to help increase the supply.

The Alaskan pipeline has the ability to carry 2 billion barrels a day (BPD). It is presently flowing at half capacity because oil companies need access to more areas to drill in. Close by is the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, an area the size of South Carolina. The oil companies have requested permission to drill in a tiny corner of this wasteland, about 2,000 acres, about the size of a golf course. This is the largest undeveloped oilfield in the Northern Hemisphere, containing an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil. It could easily produce 10 million BPD and keep the Alaska pipeline flowing full. America imports 10 million BPD of oil, and this one congressional decision could decrease our oil imports by 10 percent. At $130 per barrel, this would reduce the American trade deficit by over $45 billion per year and keep the money here instead of sending it to Saudi Arabia.

Each year since 1982, Congress has attached to the budget a ban on offshore drilling of the Pacific Cost, Atlantic Coast and the Gulf Coast of Florida. This banned area is estimated to contain 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Congress prevents us from drilling off the coast of Florida, and yet Chinese oil companies are drilling in Cuban waters off the coast of Florida. Canada is exporting to America natural gas from offshore fields of the coast of Nova Scotia, which is near the coast of Maine.

Sen. John McCain favors offshore oil and gas explorations. That could be a financial bonanza for New Jersey. The governor of Florida changed his mind and now favors offshore drilling. Virginia is trying to allow natural gas drilling off its coast, but Congress stands in the way.

So, if you are upset with high gasoline prices, you have a chance to do something about it in November when you vote.
Martin A. "Skip" Jessen
Edison