The United States, through events past, has recognized the importance of having a strategic oil reserve. Located in vast underground salt caverns throughout Texas and Louisiana, this reserve was intended to supply the United States with enough oil to sustain itself for a period of time if the actual supply were cut off by our foreign suppliers. It was not intended as a political device to lower oil prices during an election year.
Because we, as Americans, have enjoyed the fruits of a fat economy for so long, the simple idea of economic hardship seemed far-fetched. We must have forgotten the oil embargoes of the 1970s and how we were made to rethink the concepts of economy and efficiency in transportation, for that advice had long been abandoned.
We are now enraged that, through our own irrational exuberance (something I recall Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warning of), we are paying more at the pump. The idea of a passenger vehicle produced in today’s marketplace rated at an average of 16 mpg or less is sickening. That is not a legitimate reason to tap the strategic reserves; that is ignorance.
Daniel E. Toth
Brick