Editorial: Maybe Someone Is Listening

Alas, the first faint glimmer of light may have been spotted at the end of the tunnel that could carry fuel from the nation’s 571 million barrels of reserve oil into our trucks’ fuel tanks.

On Sept. 14, a White House spokesman said President Clinton was studying calls to open the nation’s strategic oil reserve to increase supplies of fuel and bring oil prices down. That is precisely the course of action that American Trucking Associations President Walter B. McCormick Jr., and others, have repeatedly insisted upon in messages to the president.

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Last week saw a new record for fuel prices, even though the national average rose “only” two cents. The $1.629-a-gallon average is more than we should be paying for fuel.

The White House has been cool to opening the oil reserve up to now, but continuing intransigence on the part of the oil producers, and ongoing political pressure on the president, may be turning the tide.

The strategic reserve was established by Congress after the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74, although it had been initially proposed during World War II.

The logic behind creating the reserve was to give the nation some leverage over oil prices and oil producers, in light of the market manipulation of the 1970s.

The oil is stored in five primary reserves in Texas and Louisiana.

The reserve has been tapped once before, to dampen oil prices in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War. More than 17 million barrels were sold to 13 companies, and the drawdown stabilized world oil prices and showed the nation’s resolve.

It’s time to do it again.

Just the news that the White House was considering tapping the oil reserve brought crude prices down last week.

While oil was priced around $36 a barrel last week even after OPEC announced it would produce an additional 800,000 barrels a day, it fell to $33.20 a barrel in New York after a report that President Clinton was preparing to tap the reserve.

That one rumor had more success in lowering prices than all the jawboning Washington had done with the oil producers over the past six months.

Open the taps.