Sometimes it pays to think the unthinkable.
Think about the rescue of Houston, TX, by Washington, DC.
Think about an oil business crushed by market distress and overregulation, hundreds of thousands of professionals and skilled workers jobless, and an influx of smiling emissaries from the nation’s capital on a mission of mass retraining.
“I see you have a master’s degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M,” says the bureaucrat. “We should be able to find you something in—let’s see—wind-turbine lubrication. Next in line, please.”
Unthinkable?
In January, President Barack Obama subtly placed the oil industry on the same political trajectory as coals. That would be the industry Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, in a CNN town hall Mar. 13, promised to crush.
Or finish crushing. Before leaving office, the administration Clinton served will have done much of the job.
In his state-of-the-union speech Jan. 12, the president said, “Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future–especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.”
He didn’t limit this program to coal. He said “oil,” too.
And he meant it.
Since then, his administration has proposed to expand a proposed toughening of methane emissions associated with oil and gas, regulate hydraulic fracturing on federal land, expand air-quality regulation of oil and gas equipment on the Outer Continental Shelf, omit Atlantic offerings from OCS leasing, and impose a $10/bbl fee on oil.
In the home-stretch of Obama’s race for environmental sainthood, more such costly regulation is certain. As things have gone with coal, so things will go with oil.
And toward the end of this extrapolation appear those amiable bureaucrats, fresh from saving the planet and eager to reconstitute dispossessed careers.
It’s almost too much to think about. But it’s not too soon to start.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Mar. 18, 2016; author’s e-mail: [email protected])