Energy policy running out of gas

When it comes to rising oil costs, most folks naturally think of the ticking meters at a gas pump. They don't think about things like the cost of rebuilding Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road, a cost that has recently been projected to increase by at least $100 million over the next eight-to-10 years because of inflation in the "construction sector."

Do tell. Sun Road, and other highway projects across the country, are becoming highly illustrative examples of the hidden costs of U.S. energy dependency and the profound influence of energy on inflation.

Prices go up when demand goes up in relation to limited supplies. And the U.S. has done precious little to develop and increase petroleum energy supplies for domestic use. Even worse, there is no reason to expect big changes in this equation.

This issue should have a much higher profile nationally, and it should be a top topic for presidential candidates, in the sense that they should be proposing to extract and refine more fossil fuels rather than pretend they are addressing the problem by advocating "alternative" energy sources as the answer. Those energy sources - everything from ethanol to wind power - come with environmental problems and opposition and they will not on their own alleviate America's appetite for oil.

That's partly because that appetite consumes oil for a wide variety of purposes. The Federal Highway Administration's most recent projections for skyrocketing inflation on Sun Road and other highway projects is partly based on the use of oil in asphalt.

"When you have oil that is at twice the cost of what it was 15 to 20 months ago, it quite naturally has an effect on the projects that depend on it," a spokesman for the administration told the Inter Lake last week.

The effects of energy inflation on the national economy are huge, with potential to become even more acute when one considers just how vulnerable the country is to global market forces and the whims of foreign dictators.

Consider just one recent news item: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez bluntly threatened to cut off oil sales to the U.S. if ExxonMobil wins court judgments to seize $12 billion in assets following Venezuela's "nationalization" of four major oil development projects.

"I speak to the U.S. empire, because that's the master: Continue and you will see that we won't send one drop of oil to the empire of the United States," Chavez said over the weekend.

Amazingly, our "empire" has allowed itself to rely on a nut case who is outwardly hostile to the United States to provide about 12 percent of national oil imports.

The economic impacts of energy inflation and the country's dependence on people like Chavez expose a vulnerability that deserves serious attention.