High prices, high profits, more drilling hard to swallow

The combination of high gas prices and record profits for the companies selling oil and gas is unsettling enough on its own, without the promise of increased heating costs accompanied by a call for increased drilling throughout Colorado and the United States. But this combination is the reality on America's energy landscape, making it difficult to sympathize with the companies that do not reciprocate the feeling for their customers. It is also challenging to feel much goodwill toward policymakers who are employing a relative hands-off approach to dealing with the perfect storm of record prices, astronomical profits and a call for access to more public lands for resource extraction. Such a combination - sure to make consumers crazy while compromising their checkbooks - should be directing a move away from traditional, petroleum energy sources. But instead, it is fueling a frantic rush for more - at direct expense to the consumers who rely on the resources in their daily lives. Lawmakers and the oil and gas companies can do better.

Durango Herald