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Congress stands up to the oil industry

by Sandy Moser, President of REP's Pennsylvania chapter
published in the Local Daily News on December 29, 2005

The oil industry got coal in their Christmas stocking rather than presents. The defeat of the latest scheme to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling was a bipartisan victory for conservatives and conservationists.

This letter is to recognize and thank U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-6th, of West Pikeland, one of the twenty-one House Republicans who kept Arctic drilling out of the budget bill. Had he not stood firm, Arctic drilling would have been rushed into law through a budget bill that could not have been filibustered.

Gerlach and his GOP colleagues showed real courage in resisting the House leadership and standing up for their convictions, the GOP’s conservation tradition, and the wishes of their constituents.

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), realizing that he didn’t have the votes to pass oil drilling in the budget bill, tried to sneak it through in the federal defense budget bill. Yet again, Senator Stevens, the man who brought us the $450 million "bridge to nowhere", was prioritizing his own pet projects above the needs of the nation – in this case, support for our troops and the victims of Katrina.

All that stood between the oil industry victory were two Republican senators who bravely opposed Stevens’ desperate last-minute effort to pass this legislation. Sad to say, Pennsylvania’s senators, Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum, supported Arctic oil drilling in the defense appropriations bill - doing so despite the fact that this was a disgraceful abuse of power by Stevens on behalf of the oil and gas industry to violate the Senate's rules by attaching this special-interest provision to this bill.

Gerlach understands that the United States needs a sensible energy strategy that will yield far more economic, security, and clean energy benefits.

America needs to focus on forward-looking energy solutions that will reduce our country's dangerous dependence on oil, save money, create economic opportunities in new energy technologies, and reduce pollution. It is long past time to stop the oil industry from driving America’s energy policies. After all, pressing for more oil fields is what’s best for the oil industry’s bottom-line. Just this year, the oil industry has squeezed Americans at the gas pump to the tune of billions in record profits and carved out billions more in government subsidies,

Columnist George F. Will recently wrote in the Daily Local News, Arctic drilling about more than just oil” (DLN, Dec. 18), that drilling in the Arctic would be good for energy policy. Since drilling the Arctic Refuge would do little to reduce oil imports and almost nothing to lower gasoline or heating oil prices, we have to question Will’s assumptions. Proponents of drilling in the Arctic Refuge point to rising gas prices as a reason to drill. But in reality, Arctic Refuge oil would amount to a drop in the bucket of the oil market.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently estimated that if we drilled for oil in the Refuge tomorrow, it would lower gas prices by roughly a penny per gallon... in 20 years.

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower protected the Arctic Refuge in 1960 because it is a spectacular place like nowhere else in America. On the behalf of the members of Republicans for Environmental Protection, we offer our thanks to Congressman Gerlach for voting in support of President Eisenhower’s vision and for opposing Steven’s power play.