Congress should support U.S. companies

The U.S. has been blessed by God with many natural resources including much oil and natural gas. However, we are one of the few countries in the world that choose not to develop them. Years ago, when the Republicans controlled Congress, there were votes to allow drilling in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), an area the size of South Carolina that contains the largest undeveloped oil field in North America. With new technology, oil companies only needed a small area approximately the size of a golf course to develop this massive oil field. Congress voted no. Now with the Democrats controlling Congress, the subject is never brought up.

Congress is presently debating a new energy bill to make us more energy self-sufficient. The primary focus is on alternate forms of energy like biodiesel, ethanol, hybrid cars, solar, wind, landfill gas, etc. These forms of energy can not compete with oil and gas, so Congress offers subsidies to things like ethanol, which makes our food and gasoline more expensive. One proposal is a $1-per-gallon subsidy to biodiesel made from animal fat, which would raise the price of diesel fuel, along with soap and detergent, since they are made from animal fat. How does Congress want to pay for all these subsidies which drive up American's cost for gasoline, heat, electricity, food, and now soap? By eliminating big oil's 6 percent tax write-off for domestic production of oil and gas. What hypocrites in Congress to subsidize all these alternatives, saying America won't have to import so much foreign oil; then pay for it by taxing our own oil companies more for the oil and gas they produce in America. The present energy bill will not decrease American imports of oil and gas, it will increase energy imports.

I have a different idea. Instead of our congressmen and senators attacking American oil companies by threatening them with excess profits taxes, removing the 6 percent subsidy for domestic production, not allowing them to drill in Alaska or off the east and west coasts, let's try and help them develop new supplies, which just might lower our energy costs. Imagine a Congress that instead of kicking American oil companies in the shins, a different Congress that lends a hand to help build a new natural gas to heat millions of homes, instead of injecting the gas back into the ground, which is what happens today because there is no way to get this gas to market. Allow offshore oil wells off the coast of Florida, maybe next to the ones Cuba is planning to build. Or allow offshore gas wells off the coast of Maine, next to the Canadian ones that already export to America.

The only way America would receive the full natural resource blessing that God intended for us, is for us to have representatives that support American companies, jobs, consumers and taxpayers, not OPEC.

Martin A. "Skip" Jessen

Edison