Al Franken
Duluth News Tribune
August 17, 2008

In Duluth and across Minnesota, people are making sacrifices because of the crisis in the energy market.

You can see the reality of the Bush-Coleman energy policy written by and for the oil companies every time you fill up at the pump. The price of gas has more than doubled since Norm Coleman went to the Senate, and the price of oil has tripled.

That means farmers are struggling to keep up with increased input costs.

Summer vacations are being canceled. And some school districts are considering going to four-day weeks.

Meanwhile, oil companies reported record profits in the most recent financial quarter. ExxonMobil alone posted $11.68 billion in profits between April and June. That’s not just a record for ExxonMobil, not just a record for an oil company, but the highest quarterly profit for any American company. Ever.

And speaking of dubious records, Coleman can claim one of his own: He has taken more campaign contributions from Big Oil than any other politician in Minnesota history.

Unfortunately, they got their money’s worth: Coleman has voted with George Bush to give oil companies billions of tax dollars that they, clearly, didn’t need and middle-class families here in Duluth can’t afford.

And now, Coleman’s response to the energy crisis is yet another huge giveaway to Big Oil, this time in the form of new leases to drill on the Outer Continental Shelf.

To be clear: I’m not opposed to drilling. We’re drilling right now. In fact, we’re third in the world in drilling. And if the oil companies have the capacity to drill more, they have 68 million acres, half of that off-shore in current federal leases where they can, and should, be drilling.

But we can’t drill our way out of this mess. The Bush administration, not generally known for robust skepticism when it comes to the oil companies, estimates that opening up the OCS to drilling wouldn’t impact the price of gas until at least 2030.

I want to help Northeastern Minnesota families now.

That’s why I support two important proposals that would bring down the price of gas not in 22 years like Coleman’s plan, but now.

First, I support a crackdown on Wall Street speculators who are driving up the price of oil as much as $40 a barrel, according to experts. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged an oil trading firm with manipulating prices. The only way to change this is with greater transparency.

Unfortunately, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar has helped to lead the charge, Coleman voted to block this effort last month, putting his pals on Wall Street ahead of Minnesotans again.

Second, I’ve called on President Bush to release 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve within the next 100 days. We’ve done this before. In 1991, the first President Bush released oil from the SPR and the price of oil dropped by a third. In 2000, President Clinton released oil from the SPR and the price of oil dropped by a third. And in 2005, the second President Bush released oil from the SPR and the price of gas dropped by 60 cents a gallon.

Releasing oil from the SPR would put more oil on the market within two weeks, and much more of it per day than new leases for drilling would when it finally starts hitting the market in the year 2030. And it would generate as much as $5 billion to $7 billion in new revenue that could be used to invest in alternative energy sources, for weatherization assistance to bring down home heating costs this winter, or even to cut the deficit.

Unfortunately, while Klobuchar supports this common-sense solution, Coleman opposes it, preferring to take the side of special interests.

In the long term, we need fundamental change in our energy policy. Instead of relying on oil to fuel our cars and our economy, we should invest in research and development of renewable energy and energy-efficiency technologies.

And I believe Minnesota can be the big winner. After all, we’re blessed with valuable resources: not just abundant wind and the crops needed to produce corn and cellulosic ethanol, but ingenuity and smart entrepreneurs ready to make our farms and our research facilities the epicenter and the engine of a green economy.

We can create jobs, revitalize our manufacturing sector, stop global warming, improve our national security, preserve our environment, and address the energy crisis all at the same time. It’s win-win for Minnesota.

But with our current energy policy and Coleman’s stance against the relief we need the only winners are Coleman’s Big Oil cronies. It’s time for a change in Washington. And it’s well past time we had some relief at the pump.

Al Franken of Minneapolis is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in the Sept. 9 primary.

The Duluth News Tribune published this op-ed on August 17, 2008.

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