By Gary Reichert
Dear Readers and Advertisers, we are forced to become political, as we did during COVID. This is in response to the war in Ukraine and the general direction of domestic energy and economic policy. We are not pro conservative or pro progressive. We are not pro Republican or Democrat. We are unashamedly, unapologetically and enthusiastically pro common sense, practical solutions and pro America.
We need to increase US domestic oil production. Current policy including but not limited to the Keystone pipeline is problematic. The arguments regarding the number of leases and current production levels are intentionally misleading. For your own business to succeed, you plan years in advance. The current changes and instability of policy make long term investment in domestic oil production risky and unpredictable. This discourages exploration and the development necessary to keep growing production.
Many of the oil producing countries are our direct adversaries. Increasing domestic oil production will damage our enemies economically and make it more difficult for them to wage physical war in Ukraine and economic war globally. It makes no sense to weaken our economy and limit our ability to help our allies while enriching bad actors and regimes that would do us harm.
The recent talks between Saudi Arabia and China about a settlement system for oil in a currency other than US Dollars is extremely concerning. That would weaken our influence globally and compound inflation domestically.
Producing a larger share of global production will help us maintain the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency. As long as our country operates at a deficit, that is a requirement.
Restricting our energy production, as we have done, is misguided in any context. Arguing to reduce global demand for energy or specifically petroleum products may be valid. Until global demand actually decreases, reducing production in the United States only means production shifts elsewhere, to jurisdictions and locations we cannot regulate or even adequately monitor. If the oil must be produced, the only sensible course is to control the production here, so it is produced as safely, cleanly and efficiently as possible.
If we do think globally, pollution does not just disappear when it is in a different country. Limiting domestic production shifts the environmental damage to a place Americans won’t notice. It does not reduce or eliminate it. Not seeing does not correlate to not occurring.
The key to reducing demand is developing energy sources to replace oil. That only happens with investment in technology. Privately funded R&D occurs when our economy is strong and risk capital is available. Restoring our energy independence is critical to a strong US economy. Restoring energy production will help provide the funding needed for the research to eventually decrease global demand for petroleum products.
We must make it clear that politicians not acting in the strategic and economic interest of the United States will be opposed by every legal means at our disposal.
We have a resource of pre-written letters and links available on every website. It will take you less than 5 minutes to send one of these letters to your Representative, Senator and Governor.
There are detailed instructions on the websites, and printed versions of the letters are included in this issue as well.
You have our permission to share these resources everywhere and by any means.
It is our responsibility to help where we can.
Easily Contact Your Government Reps
If you would like to reach out to your government representatives about US energy production but are at a loss for words, here are two sample letters for your convenience.
The “Contact Your Representatives” page on the Rollforming Magazine website — https://rollformingmagazine.com/contact-your-representative/ — is home to a searchable list of State Representatives, Senators and Governors. Each listing has buttons allowing you to easily send a message. (They are available digitally on the website so you can easily copy and paste the entire message, or passages that you choose.)
If you would like to snail-mail your representatives, we’ve formatted the letters on the opposite page so you can scan or photocopy the letter you would like to send. All of the postal mailing addresses are also available at the “Contact Your Representative” page on https://rollformingmagazine.com. RF
