REBUILDING U.S. ENERGY SECURITY

Last week's welcome end to war in the Middle East begins a period of reconstruction and rehabilitation-of ravaged cities and nations, of grieving families, of regional and global politics. It will take weeks to define the task. Just before the truce, the U.S. launched a rehabilitative project of its own. Having spent 18 months in pursuit of consensus, the Department of Energy published its National Energy Strategy. The proposal tries to rehabilitate domestic energy supply, which-in modern

March 4, 1991

3 min read

Just before the truce, the U.S. launched a rehabilitative project of its own. Having spent 18 months in pursuit of consensus, the Department of Energy published its National Energy Strategy. The proposal tries to rehabilitate domestic energy supply, which-in modern military parlance-has been attrited by antidevelopment laws and policies and general neglect.

IMMEDIATE DRUBBlNG

Consensus building didn't work. DOE's strategy received an immediate drubblng in Congress. There have even been expressions of naive longing for something akin to the Carter administration's disastrous energy blueprint.

Some opposition to DOE's proposal was to be expected from disappointed single-issue evangelists. But the strategy has run against what's beginning to look like institutional bias.

Lawmakers don't like the DOE strategy because it doesn't manipulate individuals enough. It doesn't limit their commercial choices. It relies too much on market forces and relaxes limits on a vital market element: opportunity. It calls for leasing of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain.

Many lawmakers demand tighter vehicle fuel efficiency standards-which means forcing Americans to buy smaller cars than they want. Rather than producing more oil and gas domestically, many lawmakers would rather discourage consumption with a punitive energy or fuel tax-which means slicing a tranche out of economic activity.

Why these preferences? Some lawmakers don't understand the economic difference between using energy more efficiently and simply using less energy than before. Also, some lawmakers appear driven to tell otherwise free people how to behave. Thus inclined, lawmakers complain that DOE's strategy contains the same old proposals, that it represents too thin a program, that it doesn't give environmentalists enough in the way of conservation to offset the horrors of ANWR leasing. They shudder in outrage over news that administration officials outside DOE expunged conservation mandates on ideological grounds. How dare anyone suggest that markets outperform government in matters of supply, demand, and price?

So there will be a fight over energy strategy. The oil and gas industry should support DOE's strategy as proposed because it won't get any better. DOE wants what the U.S. needs: an increase in domestic energy supply from a variety of sources. Congress wants more governance, of which the U.S. has more than enough.

Nevertheless, the energy strategy does mostly repackage old proposals. ANWR Coastal Plain leasing, nuclear licensing reform, natural gas and electric utility legislative repairs, oil pipeline deregulation, tax credits for alternative fuels-there's not much new here.

TIME TO CATCH UP

But that's the point. These ideas have been around for years, unimplemented because until now-until U.S. troops fought and died in the Middle East-the government mostly ignored energy security and the importance of domestic supply. DOE is saying it's time to catch up. It's time to promote domestic production for a change. The war just fought shows why this is so.

Yet the apparent predispositions of Congress make adoption of a supply-oriented energy strategy less than a certain bet. At this moment in history, Congress's instant balking at the energy strategy is appalling. Now DOE must forget consensus and follow the example of President Bush in the war against Iraq: Do what's right, and stick to it.