Alaska Spill and ‘Big Oil’
Colman McCarthy really laid it on the line in his column “ ‘Big Oil’ Is All of Us” (Editorial Page, May 13). And he is right too. We did reduce our national oil consumption from 18.5 million barrels per day in 1979 to 15.5 million in 1982-83. But since then, we are back to our guzzling and are now using 17 million per day. Since U.S. oil production continues to slide, imports are rising sharply and have more than doubled to 8 million barrels per day from 1985 to 1989.
As McCarthy describes, a congressman cuts up his Exxon credit card and environmentalists rant and rave about the oil companies. However, a lot more people would rant and rave if there weren’t enough gasoline to fill their tanks or oil to heat their homes. So tankers keep coming from OPEC countries to fill our growing demand.
Every time the environmentalists win a battle against offshore drilling and against development of the Alaskan North Slope Wildlife Preserve, that assures that more and more OPEC oil in tankers will be coming to the U.S.
Furthermore, importing more oil will assure a faster return to power of the OPEC countries and their ability to control prices. If you think the price of oil is high right now, just wait until OPEC is really in the driver’s seat again!
DONALD E. HIBBARD
Sherman Oaks
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