Plentiful Natural Gas Is a Solution To Our Oil Crisis

Two Approaches to Fuel Choice

Open Fuel Standards is the right choice.

ROBERT ZUBRIN

JUNE 6, 2011 4:00 A.M.

Americans are currently being heavily taxed by the governments of the OPEC cartel, who are using a policy of restricting oil production to drive up prices. Indeed, with prices inflated to the $100-per-barrel range, America’s 5 billion barrels per year of petroleum imports will cost our economy $500 billion, an amount equal to 25 percent of the federal government’s tax receipts or, alternatively, the nation’s whole balance-of-trade deficit.

The only way to break the power of the oil cartel to set global liquid-fuel prices is to open the market to competition from non-petroleum-based fuels. With this in mind, two bipartisan bills have recently been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. One is H.R. 1380, known as the “New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act,” or “NAT GAS Act” for short. The other is H.R. 1687, the Open Fuel Standards Act. The approaches adopted in these two pieces of legislation are very different.

The NAT GAS Act, which is strongly supported by oil and gas tycoon T. Boone Pickens, would provide a $7,500 tax-credit subsidy for the purchase of natural-gas cars, as well as a further subsidy to their manufacturers of $4,000 each, for a total of $11,500 per car. Natural-gas-truck subsidies would be at least double this, with the amount of the subsidy increased to as much as $64,000 per truck, depending on size. Further subsidies of up to $100,000 each would be available to filling stations to install natural-gas pumps.

via Two Approaches to Fuel Choice – Robert Zubrin – National Review Online.