Do Solutions to the High Gas Prices Exist?

It doesn't seem all that long ago, that gasoline prices were under $2.00 a gallon. In most areas of the midwestern United States, the price at the pump is now about $4.09 a gallon. And that's just for 87 octane gas. Mid-grade and premium grade fuels cost an average of nine cents and eighteen cents per gallon more respectively. For those few brave souls left who are operating a full service gas station where the driver remains in the car while the service station attendant pumps the gas, the price is likely to be around $4.49 a gallon. It's even more difficult to remember the days when a gallon of gas cost around .39 or .49 a gallon and two or three service station attendants would come out and check the air pressure in your tires, clean off a windshield full of bugs, and even pop the hood to check the oil and brake fluid. Even more difficult to find these days are service stations who still employ someone who can fix mechanical problems with your car or even fix a flat tire.

Just to have a little fun, let's look at how the landscape has changed in 2008. You pull into the average gas station today, and it's likely to be a convenience store that's more interested in selling lottery tickets, beer and cigarettes, than it is in selling you a tankful of gas. Because the price of gas now tops $4.00 a gallon, your choice at the pump is to either pull out a debit or credit card and get pre-authorized to pump your gas, or to make the trek inside if you're paying cash, and wait behind a group of people ahead of you who are buying lottery tickets, food items, or just making small talk with the convenience store clerk. Completely gone is the remotest notion that someone should actually assist you with the task of pumping gas. Even more enjoyable is the lingering fragrance of gasoline on your hands after pumping the liquid gold that usually necessitates a trip to the bathroom to wash your hands.

Perhaps the most annoying part of pumping gas nowadays is the concept of "pre-paying" your gasoline. A number of convenience stores, before pre-paying for gasoline became the norm, in an effort to dissuade motorists from filling up and then dashing without paying, had to either install video tape camaras to monitor your activities, or rig up intercom systems to make "small-talk" with you while you filled up, or plastered all kinds of warning signs with pictures of highway patrolmen on them, letting you know that you're in for a high-speed chase if you don't pay up. One place even posted a sign saying that your license plate number was duly recorded upon each visit to the gas pump. Another late night visit to a convenience store offering gas for sale, before switching its operations to prepaid gasoline, had a whole wall covered with photos of vehicles of purported gasoline thieves and was seeking the assistance of those paying for their gasoline to help hunt down those motorists who had a problem remembering to get out their wallets.

Before getting to some possible solutions for high gas prices, let's also examine the demise of one other American symbol: that of the full service gas station. If you want your tires patched, you have to typically go to the local Wal Mart or tire store. If you want your brakes fixed, you may have to go to one place; if you want your oil changed, you may have to go to another, and so on. Your only choice if your car breaks down and you can't fix it or get someone to help, is to be towed. And if you break down on a Friday night, it might be Monday night before you get moving again, depending on the problem with your car and what part you might be looking for. But the reason for pointing all this out about fixing your car that's non-gas related, is that it used to be that the profit on a gallon of gas used to be enough to pay the bills at a service station. Even with the exorbitant gas prices, gas station owners can't make a go of things without selling lottery tickets, beer, and twinkies.

One solution that ought to be posed to the gasoline companies that will probably never see the light of day again would be to bring back competition. Whatever happened to all those anti-trust laws that used to prevent big companies from buying up all the little ones and driving all the competition out of business? In the Midwest, you tend to buy your gas from Conoco-Phillips, Shell, Texaco, and Cenex. There isn't a whole lot of room for independent dealers out there. British Petroleum with its funny green sign appears to have sold out to Cenex and is heading for greener (no pun intended) pastures in Kansas, for example. But part of the joy in living in a smaller midwestern town of about 50,000 inhabitants is watching the price of gas go up almost daily. Instead of having a little fun with some of the gas wars of bygone days when Dealer A charged $1.00 a gallon while Dealer B down the street only charged about .80, you can now watch dealers on one side of town raise the price of gas five or ten cents, and by the time you get to the other side of town, the word got out (probably by e-mail!), and they're raising the price another five or ten cents on their gas just as you pull into their station. Competition normally would help keep prices down or at least keep them from rising $1.00 a gallon in a month's time, but there doesn't appear to be any competition in the gasoline business these days. Who knows? Maybe the same people who sit on the board of directors for Shell Oil also sit on the board for Cenex or Texaco.

Let's look at the politics of the situation. It has been argued that the real energy policy of the United States is to let other countries drill our oil for us in order to avoid polluting the environment or endangering various wildlife habitats. As long as the supply from other countries held up, we didn't have a problem. As this article is being written, President Bush announces today that he has "signed an executive order," decreeing that drilling off the coasts of the United States in areas previously declared off limits can begin. According to the source reporting this, the executive order overturned a decision made THREE decades ago, to stop drilling in these off-shore areas. But we're not out of the woods yet. Congress still has to give the final OK. This is clearly becoming an election year issue. Should deciding what candidates get elected to office be the issue here? Or should alleviating the high price at the pump be the concern?

In typical political fashion, Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, said that George Bush's gesture to open up off shore drilling "won't provide a drop of oil for seven years," and won't provide the necessary relief at the gas pump that he believes will come from biofuels and alternative energy sources. At least George Bush's executive order makes some sense even if it does take a while to materialize in lower prices at the gas pump. How long is it going to take for biofuels and alternative energy sources to have any effect? The same seven years that Obama says George Bush's executive order will take?

It's worth asking just why it took three decades for the U.S. to even toy with the idea of drilling off shore again. Are we being held hostage by environmentalists who have prevented us from drilling for oil? It's probably worth suggesting that we've basically had no energy policy for decades if it took thirty years to decide to drill again in areas that could greatly aid us with the supply of oil. It's fair to suggest that we've had politicians on both sides of the aisle more concerned about their re-election bids and party agendas than with easing consumer aggravation at the pump. But now that the damage has been done, how do we fix it?

Obviously, we should drill for more oil. While Bush may be trying to make a scapegoat out of Congress if they fail to ratify his executive order to drill offshore, it is about time to drill. It's also about time we looked into dictating a real energy policy that assures the flow of oil and gas when we need it, and not call for the public to cut back on its consumption. In California, where the public was called upon to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles and cut back on gas consumption and the public dutifully complied, their citizens were rewarded with a higher gasoline tax because the public treasuries were being deprived of revenue when people cut back. So cutting back on consumption would not appear to be the answer. If we drilled for our own oil, and built more refineries that are reported to be in short supply, we could cut down on our dependence on foreign oil.

The biofuels and ethanol supplies don't seem to be a long-term answer. The problem with ethanol is that it drives up the price of corn and affects the cost of food. Convincing data that ethanol burns efficiently in cars or helps alleviate the problem with gasoline supply hasn't been provided. Certainly, alternative technology should be encouraged. A carburetor that gets 50 miles to the gallon or even 100 miles to the gallon might be a place to start. Other components of our energy "policy," or lack thereof, should be considered. For example, if we built more nuclear plants to provide electricity, some experts believe it would drop the price of a gallon of gas by as much as a dollar or more. The environmentalists don't want this to happen in America with nuclear plants, even though Europe is reported to be about 80% nuclear. And of course the environmentalists don't like coal plants.

If all of this environmentalism is so good for America, then why aren't any environmentalists coming up with any practical solutions to high energy and gasoline costs? The environmental restrictions on oil drilling and nuclear energy, which shouldn't be totally ignored, have just gone too far in limiting our energy supplies in the name of global warming and other perceived environmental catastrophes. It should be duly noted that environmentalists are now calling the earth's weather phenomenon, "Climate Change," and not "Global Warming." Twenty or thirty years ago, it seemed that environmentalists were warning of a coming ice age, and when that apparently didn't attract enough research grants, they changed tactics to warn about global warming. With the recent cooling trend, they now talk about "climate change" in an effort to always be ahead of the curve. Not all environmentalism is bad.

Efforts to clean up the smog with emissions standards was a good idea. But limiting petroleum drilling and nuclear fuel should be discussed based on the facts, and not on faulty science that is interested more in government subsidies than in providing a practical way to deal with the price of a gallon of gas. Lest anyone think the research grant or government subsidy issue isn't a factor, stop and consider how a large university in Kansas was recently awarded $15 million to study the melting of the polar ice caps. At least Mexico was subsidizing the price of a gallon of gas at the pump as was India, instead of the U.S. government pumping out subsidies for environmental studies. Apparently people liked the subsidies because Californians were driving to Tijuana to fill up their gas tanks. Whether the gas subsidy is a good idea or not, it was hard to argue the effect it had on motorists looking to buy cheaper gas.

In the final analysis, are there solutions to the higher gas prices? One might ask why there were lines at the gas pump in 1973 and why the lines didn't form again until 2008. Is the solution a political one? We were told in 1973 that the world's oil supply was running out and then under Jimmy Carter, Americans were told to drive 55 MPH on the highway and turn their thermostats in their homes up to 72 or 74 degrees to cut back on consumption. It worked so well that Carter was resoundingly defeated for re-election in 1980. The real issue seems to be that of providing a more assured and plentiful supply, of building an adequate number of refineries, of stimulating competition to keep prices steady, and working the alternative fuels and energy sources into the picture as they become more practical. A wholesale switch to alternative fuels and energy sources won't work. The public can't be asked to wait seven years or however long it's going to take to be able to afford vehicles that are built with engines running on something other than gasoline.

If the solution is political, then there is no clearer choice in the 2008 elections than there is now between Barack Obama, who opposes drilling, and John McCain, who claims to be in favor of more drilling. This isn't intended to endorse either candidate. Regardless of who's elected president, it still depends on a cooperative Congress and a cooperative public. We can't have citizens' groups tying up Congressional action to drill in the courts, for instance. It will take a majority of people and enough favorable public opinion to do the right thing in supplying more oil and/or energy sources. One thing seems certain: the price of a gallon of gas has the power to either fuel a recovery or bring on a recession, because everything we need to live, depends on how it arrives to us for consumption. HIgher gas prices quite obviously result in higher prices of consumer goods. Every time the cost of fuel goes up twenty or thirty cents per gallon, check out the prices at your local supermarket or fast food restaurant if you need proof that higher gas prices affect the quality of your life.