Save the Music: Drill for More Oil!

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

I'm a musician. I cannot go on tour with the price of fuel where it is. I want the environmental crowd to get out of my darn way so I can take advantage of opportunities where I have to drive my big van -- towing my equipment behind.

Drill now. I am on that bandwagon. America should have been drilling since the early 1990s. It is obvious there will be no decline in demand because there are 2 billion more people driving cars now (in China and India, for instance) than there were back then. Supply must be increased. Pass laws if you like to oversee the environmental impact and keep the crude that comes out of American soil in America.

The leases the oil companies have where they aren't drilling is because it has been determined that what will be brought up isn't enough to justify the cost. But there are known huge reserves in places where the companies are prohibited from drilling. Yes, we should make them develop the other technologies and power sources as a precondition to allowing drilling. But that's for the long run. In the short run we need to get out of Big Oil's way.

If the commodities markets know America is serious, those guys will be hedging their bets in the opposite direction and crude prices will at least stabilize for an extended period, as happened after the 1979 oil spike, or start to decline.

What will take time is to construct the refineries necessary to make something useful out of the crude oil. Move the environmentalist lobby out of the way and the refineries will get built. Global warming be damned, it is a hoax. This planet is adapting to what we do because God gave it to us to use for as long as we need it.

Mike Visaggio. Richmond.