Enjoying the $1.67-a-gallon gas for your holiday travels? Well, enjoy it while you can because the guys President-elect Obama is appointing in key positions want gas prices to be much higher. Let’s start with his Secretary of Energy, Dr Steven Chu. From our friends at the National Taxpayers Union:
Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
Here is the original WSJ source. Chu has also been quoted saying, “Coal is my worst nightmare.”
For Department of the Interior, Obama selected Senator Ken Salazar, D-Colo. Back when gas was four dollars per gallon, it was Salazar on the Senate floor who would be perfectly okay with $10 per gallon gas.
Granted, Salazar’s complacency with $10 per gallon gas was in objection to drilling in the United States, calling it a phantom solution. But one sure way for gas to reach these astronomical prices is to restrict supply. And the amount of energy available offshore, 19.1 billion barrels of oil and 83.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—approximately 30 years’ worth of imports from Saudi Arabia and enough natural gas to power America’s homes for 17 years, is nothing to sneeze at:
The Institute for Energy Research has the full scoop on Salazar here.
So we have two men, heading up two extremely important energy departments, supporting gas prices in the upward bounds of $10 per gallon. Happy holidays!
(Nick Loris, "$10-a-gallon Gas?" in today's The Foundry, a blog sponsored by the Heritage Foundation)
