The president & gas prices

To the Editor:

Early on April 4th I heard a part of Mitt Romney's victory speech after he won the primaries in D.C., Maryland, and Wisconsin. Romney asked the audience if they could stand gasoline prices like these for the next four years, and there was a loud chorus of "Boo" and "No." Do they really believe that the president has any control over gas prices? All U. S. people over the age of 20 should remember that gas prices rise at the start of warm weather, and it happened under every president all the way back to Eisenhower. Voters ought to know by now that gas prices will not suddenly change if Romney is elected. No president ever had any control over gas prices.

On March 23, the Daily American Republic reprinted a great article from New York (AP) called "What makes gasoline prices rise?" Thank you for the article, DAR. Most of the usual questions are answered in that article, and the only reference to politicians was to say that they might lower federal gas taxes. As the article says, the simplest answer to the price question is that oil and gasoline are global commodities in a global market and the energy companies are in business to make profits. They all tell us that they are in business to serve us, but they're really only in business to make money. If an American energy company can profit one cent more per gallon of gas by selling that gas in China rather than the U. S., that gas is going to China every time. Every time because the stockholders demand it. By they way, wouldn't it be fun to know how many Middle Eastern bigwigs, and other unfriendly people around the world, own stock in American oil companies? No, we probably don't want to know.

Some say that Obama could help by opening new drilling leases. Many, many people say we should go get "our" oil right now. But "we" don't have any unless we own some oil company stock. Any oil extracted anywhere belongs to the company which had the front money, people and equipment to develop the oil field, and they don't intend to give that oil away. If Obama or Romney opened all the leases immediately, how long does it take to get a new filed developed? Maybe more drilling would help in a few years, if the demand remains stable. Or maybe the companies who get the leases would just sit on them until they became profitable. At the time, is there any guarantee that the U. S. oil will remain in the U. S.? No, none at all. It will always go to the highest bidder. There are 1.3 billion people in China and 1.1 billion in India and many million more in the rest of the world, and they all want their own car. Demand and price will continue to rise with population growth.

Another factor is refinery capacity. Right now all U. S. refineries are running at full capacity except for down time for maintenance and repairs. Can Obama force an oil company to build another refinery? No, no, no. That would be another unacceptable government expansion. Will Romney order the government to build and operate another refinery? No, no, no. That would be another unacceptable socialistic attack on free enterprise. So how is the refinery issue going to change? It won't change any time soon. More refineries will be built by the oil companies when it becomes profitable to do so. They will never build another refinery to drive down the price of our gas.

What about the Keystone Pipeline? It may be built, it may not be built. If it is built, it will not bring down our gas price. Charles Krauthammer wrote in a March 16 article in DAR that vetoing the pipeline "forfeits a major strategic resource to China." That pipeline will carry tar sand or tar sand oil, and it was always intended for export to China, regardless of the route it takes to get to port. That much was a done deal before any of us heard about it. The Canadians want to build the pipeline across the U. S. because that would be much cheaper than having to build it across the Canadian Rockies.

The bottom line is that the person in the Oval Office never has and never will have any power over gasoline prices. But we, the People, can reduce our gas bills. We can combine errands, car pool, service the engine regularly, keep the tires inflated correctly, turn off the engine when we're not driving, and slow down. We can also support Obama's mandate to raise the fuel efficiency of new cars.

The president can't control the cost of a gallon of gas, but there is one more very important tool that the president can use to lower our gas bills. The Ppresident can lower the highway speed limit to 55 mph. Any state that wouldn't enforce the limit would lose federal highway funds. Don't think it can't be done -- that was Jimmy Carter's response to the first Arab oil embargo, and it worked. It would work now, and it would be very interesting to know how much gas that would save a year. It really wouldn't need to be a mandate. All of us can choose to slow down for a week or month and run our own numbers.

Louis Dersch

Williamsville, Mo.