Proposed Increase in Gasoline Tax

I read with amusement Beilenson’s “fast and simple” solution for cutting our dependence on foreign energy. Tax, tax, tax. Pretty simple! He wants to take what is probably the fairest tax ever created and mutate it into the equivalent of an oil-import fee. Some solution.

Fortunately, he has little chance of getting it across the President’s desk--at least until 1989 when the Democrats will undoubtedly occupy the White House.

However, there is a fast and simple solution. It has been available for almost seven years. The irony is that it was killed by the great synfuels debacle of that era. Remember when our government was pouring billions of our tax dollars into empty holes in Colorado and other sites so Big Oil could supply us with a $50-a-barrel product? It didn’t work. But it squeezed out many small entrepreneurial companies who indeed had “a better idea.”

One such company, Ramex Synfuels International, Inc., has a process that works. And with none of the environmental, cost, water or other problems that plagued the majors in the 1970s and early ‘80s. The test wells will be fired within two weeks in a shale formation in southwest Wyoming. Each well will produce 100 Mcf (thousand cubic feet) of 850 BTU (British thermal unit) gas for five years or more, supplying a customer co-located at the site. And at 50 cents Mcf (versus $2.25 per Mcf for natural gas).

The Ramex process also has application to tar sands, coal, heavy oils and even peat bogs.

Stand by Rep. Beilenson, the world is about to change.

JOHN F. MAYER

Corona