Editorial

EDITORIAL: Have oil, will travel

Until renewables get better at this

"If you got 75 or 80 percent of what you were asking for, I say take it and fight for the rest later."

--Ronald Reagan

(DROP CAP) The crisis over the unfortunately named "debt ceiling," which is really about paying for what Congress agreed to spend the previous year, has been resolved (for now) and it appears that Ronald Reagan's sentiments quoted above were followed by clear bipartisan majorities in both houses.

It was a compromise, which means that everyone from John Boozman to Joe Biden agree it's not perfect. This is good. In politics, compromise often is.

However, there are plenty of people in the energy industry who should be very happy. In fact, the energy industry may have benefitted the most. And when the energy industry benefits, those of us who use energy benefit, too.

Renewable energy won because the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which has been effective in the deployment of wind, solar and electric vehicles in the past year, remains intact and will be for the foreseeable future. This will create more investment certainty, jobs and economic activity while reducing greenhouse gas and other emissions that cause poor local air quality.

Oil and gas won because, remarkably, the same bill included the okay to build the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline. Talk about compromise.

At the center of this is centrist Democrat Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The Mountain Valley pipeline runs through his state, and as a key supporter of the pipeline, he's drawn fire from other Democrats and environmental groups for his support of conventional energy. Nevermind that he also played a major role in the tax incentives enshrined in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

Manchin knows about compromise as he represents arguably the most conservative state to be represented by a Democrat in the U.S. Senate. As a centrist, he knows something the Left frequently refuses to acknowledge in its zeal to promote renewable energy: The nation's pipeline system is every bit as critical to our infrastructure as the Interstate Highway System, bridges, dams, power lines and the Internet.

Yes, pipelines carry potential environmental hazards. When oil pipelines rupture, that's front-page news. That's because those incidents are about as rare as airline crashes. (There's a saying in this news business: We don't cover it when a plane lands safely. You could also say we don't cover it when oil gets to Beaumont without problems.)

Additionally, despite the advances in wind and solar, much of the electricity used to propel electric vehicles is generated using natural gas. Not too long ago "clean" natural gas was the darling of the environmental movement, but alas the close association with oil was too much for most on the extreme port side of American politics.

Speaking of the environment, the two other means of transporting oil are truck or rail. Trucking requires dramatically more diesel per unit of oil transported than pipelines do. That means more auto emissions contributing to climate change and sullying local air quality. And, make no mistake, highway maintenance from the additional wear and tear costs additinal taxpayer dollars.

On the flip side of newsworthiness: See train derailments. While pipeline spills and plane wrecks make news because of their rarity, in the absence of an absolute calamity train derailments are not widespread national news because they're so frequent. NPR reports "There were at least 1,164 train derailments across the country last year," roughly three per day nationwide in 2022.

Yes, many will argue we should be in the process of phasing out oil and gas (we are) and that additional pipelines won't help. But in the real, or should we say modern, world, we live in a country that needs more energy than renewables can currently produce. The transition takes time.

Congress, in its collective wisdom (did we just say that?), not only did the right thing by raising the debt ceiling and saving the economy, but they also did the right thing for energy and the environment.

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