High Gas Prices Revisited

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks having high gas prices is good. Reiss makes a good addition to my argument (“Slipping Backwards (and not in a good way)”, October 23, 2005) – he agrees that high gas prices promote innovation:

For years, the [oil] industry’s long-term benchmark was $20 a barrel in today’s dollars; to get a green light, new investments needed to be profitable at that level. Now the industry is counting on prices to settle near $30. Some aggressive CEOs believe they’ll stay as high as $40.

The changing outlook opens horizons – for conventional drilling, sure, but also for alternatives. Some new technologies merely produce more crude. But others tap energy supplies that have nothing to do with black pools under the Middle East.

Here’s hoping we tap sustainable fuels this time, rather than finite resources that we can’t restore without millions of years of effort.

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