Gas Prices a-Go-Go

Tomorrow is the exhaustively-named House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming’s hearing on high gas prices. According to Chairman Ed Markey, it would seem that the problem with high gas prices is the percentage of oil and gas that U.S. suppliers import from abroad. In the world of gas price demagoguery, of course, importing petroluem products from countries that produce them cheaper than we can isn’t international commerce, it’s “dependence of foreign sources of energy,” which makes it sound as though we were fueling Crystal River with plutonium smuggled out of Pakistan.

I suspect that the committee will spend very little time asking how energy prices might be lowered by lifting restrictions on domestic exploration and refinery development. That said, they will likely spend no time at all pondering how dozens of greenhouse gas and renewable energy legislative provisions will almost certainly increase energy prices throughout the economy. It’s like inviting PETA to testify at a hearing on “America’s Meat Supply Crisis.”