A plan to end tax breaks for oil companies would stymie U.S. energy independence

Last month, labor unions across the country held press conferences to decry the high price of oil and gasoline. The Eastern Maine Labor Council held a media event to join in with the national movement. Unfortunately, instead of holding true to their motto of “solidarity” and working to bring people together for real solutions to our energy crisis, union officials decided instead to promote a partisan political agenda. Their plan would hold the country back from achieving true energy independence.

One of the “solutions” put forward by the labor council’s president was to end tax breaks for oil companies. In classic partisan fashion, they echoed the old refrain of attacking business and blaming the current predicament on the greed of faceless corporations. The talking points being disseminated from Washington, D.C., are calling for a windfall profits tax on oil companies in order to redistribute that “wealth.”

The U.S. does need to take steps to start redistributing oil wealth. The people who are making the real killing off today’s oil prices aren’t American corporations; they are Middle Eastern countries and characters such as Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan dictator. International financial analysts are calling the current situation the “greatest wealth transfer the world has ever known.” It is time for an “American First” energy policy that will enable us to free ourselves from the grip of foreign oil and end the growing threat to our economic stability that comes from transferring hundreds of billions of our hard earned dollars to foreign rulers, year after year.

The first step to U.S. energy independence is to increase domestic oil production. Instead of importing two-thirds of our oil, we need to allow for exploration and extraction in areas that are currently banned from such practices. Sen. John McCain has said he would lift a ban on off-shore drilling if he were elected this fall. This would be a first step toward energy independence and lower prices.

In 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act that required the Department of the Interior to inventory oil resources that could be found both onshore and offshore in U.S. territory. Interior reported back that we have an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil sitting off our coast.

As far as I’m concerned, for geopolitical reasons in a world that has grown very dangerous, we should be getting every drop of oil we can from wells drilled right here in America and in our territorial waters. It’s common sense for our economy and our national security.

Drilling here and drilling now will not be a silver bullet. There is no silver bullet for the situation we’re in. And it will not return oil prices to the low levels of the 1990s. But what it will do is help keep the dollars we do spend at the pump closer to home. Instead of exporting hundreds of billions to countries in the Persian Gulf, eroding the value of the U.S. dollar and adding to our already-crushing national debt, we could be using those dollars to reinvest in an ambitious program to put an end to America’s dependence on oil.

America’s energy future is going to be in increased solar, tidal, wind and nuclear energy. But a full conversion from oil is not going to happen overnight or even in the next five or 10 years. Our infrastructure has to be modified and alternative energy technology must be made cheaper and more available to consumers.

All of this will take time, and unfortunately we did not start on this transition when we should have – back in the 1970s and the days of the Arab oil embargo. In the meanwhile, we will need domestic oil to keep our economy moving while we gradually shift to sustainable energy sources.

A massive retooling of America’s energy infrastructure will create countless new jobs. These new jobs will hopefully be available to the same union members who are losing their current jobs in mills across Maine. And new energy technologies will create jobs that we can’t even imagine today.

I remember a time when America’s unions were fighting the outsourcing of American’s manufacturing jobs by promoting the “Made in America” label. I thought that was a good idea. I think they should have used their platform last month to promote using oil that is “made in America,” too.

Rep. Bob Walker, M.D., R-Lincolnville, is the ranking Republican member of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.