It
was always a bad idea to open up this pristine area to oil companies,
but the prospect of doing something about today’s high fuel prices must
have been tempting to those on the fence regarding this drilling.
We’re glad Gerlach and others resisted this temptation and the search for easy solutions where there aren’t any.
"The
problem with ANWR is that it diverts attention away from what really
needs to be done," Gerlach said, that being, among other things,
producing more forms of alternative sources of energy.
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, and for that we give Roses to Gerlach.
Oil
companies are "for-profit" companies, and we don’t begrudge them that
fact. All companies are also in the business of making money.
But is there a point when a company is making too much profit and at the expense of the American consumer?
That
was among the issues at play on Wednesday when top executives from five
oil companies appeared before two Senate committees on Wednesday. The
five companies -- Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and Royal
Dutch/Shell --collectively had a profit of nearly $33 billion in the
latest quarter.
That’s
a ton of money, too much in our estimation. And U.S. Sen. Pete V.
Domenici, R-N.M., deserves credit for aggressively asking the companies
if they colluded to increase fuel prices. If they did they broke the
law.
Americans
are not blameless. We’ve adoped a lifestyle that relies too heavily on
the automobile, and now we’re paying the price for that.
But
that doesn’t give oil companies the right to make record profits at the
very time American consumers are struggling to make ends meet. We
present Thorns to oil company executives for doing just that.
