A letter to the editor, responding to: “We’re Still Importing Crude Oil from OPEC. Why?”
Dear Editor:
You are spot on with this commentary. It is tragic that so many Americans have come to take inexpensive, efficient O&G energy so for granted that they hype and pump every alternative with subsidies while demonizing O&G. But don’t dare disrupt their privileged lives with a supply disruption or rolling brownout. Too bad they are not the ones subscribing to and getting educated by your work.
The current oil price regime caused by savage Bedouin tent economic theory is mind-numbing and beyond logic. Equally illogical is that the current administration is doing nothing in response or to help support the U.S. O&G industry so critical to the domestic and world economy – perhaps in deluded hopes of crushing fossil fuels. If they understood what a shock to the fragile economy it would be to accelerate a shift to dispatchable (intermittent) alternative energies and an entirely new transmission infrastructure and industrial complex, they might think twice about supporting the health of the O&G industry.
Like you[r commentary writer Greg Barnett], I’ve worked in O&G since 1980, and I’ve also worked on several alternative energy projects. It’s all important and necessary to the long-term viability of our economy and continued growth. It is sad that O&G is so misunderstood, largely because most of us technical types just do our jobs very well without seeking credit, and by many the villainous scape-goat of unchecked hyper-growth in other vastly more polluting countries. I hope America wakes up before we crash into the malaise exemplified by so many failed socialist European countries. That is not a model to aspire to!
From: Greg Petruska, MBA, P.E.
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