By David Gerard
Like many people, I’m suspicious of oil and gas companies — not because of their products’ unpredictable, volatile prices, but the companies have an “in” with government most businesses don’t.
I’m grateful for oil and natural gas.
I like staying warm in winter, and all but four years of my life, I’ve lived in homes heated with natural gas.
I like vacationing and driving myself somewhere when I want, so I’m thankful for the independence gasoline has granted me over the years.
But the companies? I’m suspicious of them.
This past week, Oklahoma House Speaker Chris Benge proposed an energy plan for helping reduce the state’s dependence on foreign oil. Benge wants the Legislature to help finance the expansion of publicly available compressed natural gas stations from 28 to 56 in the next five years.
He also proposes the state help fund the conversion of state, city and school district fleets to compressed natural gas, and finance CareerTech programs to train technicians to work on natural gas-powered vehicles.
There are more incentives: low interest loans and tax credits, to encourage the use of compressed natural gas.
Using natural gas, which Oklahoma has a lot of, for vehicles, is a good idea.
But why should the state build gas stations for natural gas companies?
Are they having difficulty with profit margins? Will they not make money selling compressed gas from the stations?
And why should taxpayers have to pay to convert engines? If the gas companies are going to make money on all this natural gas of theirs, why don’t they have assistance programs to convert engines from gasoline?
See, that’s what gets me about gas and oil companies. They go to Congress and legislatures and say they need help, and congressmen and legislators feel they have to help the industry.
Even U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., proposed legislation in Congress to provide tax credits and no or low interest bonds to switch school and government fleets to compressed natural gas.
The last I heard, Oklahoma’s natural gas companies were doing pretty well. Oklahoma City is booming because of natural gas interests.
This past week Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. announced it would sell a gas field to BP America for $1.7 billion. Chesapeake also sold off interest in another field and is collecting $1.65 billion.
Oh, I know Chesapeake is spending money to develop new fields, but obviously they’re making money.
And then there’s Devon Energy, another Oklahoma City-based natural gas company, with plans to build a $350 million, nearly 40-story building downtown.
If the company has money like that, they could afford to build a few compressed natural gas stations. Besides, the state Legislature this past session gave them tax breaks on drilling deep wells.
But you and I know what will happen this winter when low-income residents can’t pay their gas bills. The federal government will come up with heating assistance, and those of us who pay our bills will receive a notice asking us to please give extra to share the warmth with the needy.
Probably, gas producers don’t have money to build their stations, convert vehicles to compressed natural gas and lower prices so poor people can afford to pay their gas bills because the companes are spending too much of their money lobbying politicians for tax breaks and government-subsidized incentives to sell their product.
Let’s be careful we don’t exchange dependence on one type of fuel for dependence on another. And in subsidizing one energy source, let’s be careful we don’t squelch the development of alternative energy sources that ultimately will make us energy independent.
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