“U.S. politicians must muster the courage to scrap the fable of energy independence once and for all. If they continue to lead their people toward the mirage of independence and forsake the oasis of interdependence and cooperation, only disaster will result.” Those are the words of Saudi Arabia’s Turki al-Faisal, in a 2009 article hectoring “misguided” U.S. politicians who promote American energy independence from Saudi Arabia. (Saudi Arabia is our second largest oil supplier.) This, wrote Turki, a former ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom, is “political posturing at its worst.”
Don’t you just love lectures in democracy from potentates of religious dictatorships where women can neither drive nor vote? But in President Obama, it looks as if Turki has found his turkey: A president with the Saudi idea of “courage” to keep the United States on the Saudi reservation — sorry, “oasis” — of interdependence and cooperation” (ka-ching).
It’s not just that Obama has presided over an effective freeze in new domestic drilling. The administration has failed to approve a game-changing new pipeline that would effectively eliminate our dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia, (No. 2) Venezuela (No. 4) and other nasty oil suppliers. The new pipeline would increase our intake from friendly, democratic, human rights and environmentally conscious Canada next door. (Canada is already our No 1. oil supplier.) Short of please, some day, exploiting our own ample resources, I can’t think of a better scenario.
There’s a bonus: The new pipeline would also create 100,000 American jobs according to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich. Even Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore supports the project.
So what are we waiting for? For the Obama administration to say yes.
Administration tardiness on the pipeline question is so extreme that the House Energy and Commerce Committee has voted out a bill requiring Obama to speed up the decision.
The Environmental Protection Agency and assorted environmentalist groups oppose the pipeline, which is a bad sign. Together, they made a formidable combination when green pressure persuaded unelected bureaucrats on the EPA appeals board to scotch a massive Shell Oil project in Alaska this year — another big energy and job producer, this one made in the USA.
Meanwhile, there’s the Communist Chinese angle to consider. The Associated Press reports that China has been banging on Canada’s door with billions of dollars from Sinopec, a Chinese-controlled company, for a pipeline of its own to the Pacific Coast. Chinese companies have bought up multibillion-dollar stakes in Canadian oil-sands projects. So, while the Obama administration lags, China is picking up all the marbles we’ve left about. This led Upton to a question, one every American should ask their U.S. representatives: “Why is it that we’re not working with Canada, which will be producing more than 3 or 4 million barrels a day from oil sand, and we’ve stalled on the application to build a pipeline? If we continue to say we may not be interested, Canada is going to turn around and build that pipeline not to the United States but instead to Vancouver, and they’re going to be selling it off to China.”
And then what will happen? Our dependence on Saudi oil (No. 2), Nigerian oil (No. 5), Venezuelan oil (No. 4) and the rest will continue to rise, transferring our remaining wealth to the standout Shariah states, kleptocracies, and Marxist governments of the world, further ensuring that “oasis of interdependence and cooperation” that Turki al-Faisal was talking about. It’s a Saudi dream come true, and an American nightmare.
Examiner Columnist Diana West is syndicated nationally by United Media and is the author of “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.”
