Oregon daily emerald., June 25, 1973, Page 5, Image 5

-Com m en tary
Pipeline delay national stupidity
By ERNEST CONINE
In a playful bit of muscle-flexing, four
Arab nations briefly stopped pumping oil a
few days ago to demonstrate their ability
to shut off vitally needed energy supplies if
the United States and other oil importing
countries don’t behave to suit them.
At about the same time, Sen. J. William
Fulbright (D-Ark.) seriously suggested
that a growing dependence on middle
eastern oil may lead the United States or
its “surrogates” to take over the Arab oil
fields by military force.
With all this going on, the continuing
delay in construction of the Trans-Alaska
oil pipeline is incredible. More than that, it
is a national stupidity for which
Americans may pay dearly in the years
ahead.
As practically everybody knows by now,
this country no longer produces anywhere
near enough petroleum to meet demand.
We are already importing a third of our
needs. If things continue on their present
course, half or more of our oil supplies will
be coming from foreign sources by 1980 —
a staggering 4.4 billion barrels. Most of
these imports will come from the
politically volatile Middle East.
Leaving aside the very real political and
national security considerations, the
economic implications are staggering. Oil
imports would constitute roughly a 16
billion dollar drain on the U.S. balance of
payments. It is hard to see how deficits of
that magnitude could be offset unless the
government, at great expense to the
taxpayers, pumped massive subsidies into
such export industries as aerospace and
agriculture.
Enter Alaskan oil.
The larg >st oil discovery ever made on
the North American continent was made
five years ago on Alaska’s north slope. Its
proven reserves are estimated con
servatively at about 10 billion barrels — 25
per cent of total U.S. domestic reserves.
The actual figure may be eight or ten
times that much.
In 1969 a group of oil companies sought a
permit to build a pipeline to carry the oil
789 miles southward across Alaska to the
Port of Valdez for tanker shipment to Los
Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
Then came the environmentalists,
protesting that the project would do
irreparable damage to the permafrost,
imperil wildlife and pose a danger of
serious spills from oil tankers. If the north
slope oil is to be tapped at all, they say, it
should be transported via a pipeline across
Canada to the Middle West.
The latest court ruling has made it clear
that the Trans-Alaska pipeline cannot be
built without an act of Congress — and
even then more lawsuits by the en
vironmentalists could delay construction
indefinitely. That is where things stand.
No one should imagine, of course, that
Alaskan oil will eliminate the need for oil
imports. But as Interior Secretary Rogers
C.B. Morton has pointed out, “Every
barrel of oil we can deliver and produce
domestically means one less barrel we
must import.”
Adds William Simon, deputy
secretary of the treasury: “The
significance of our north slope energy
potential,” he told a Senate committee, ‘‘is
not just the 2 million barrels per day that
could someday be delivered through the
Alaska pipeline. Nor is it the 10 billion
barrel proven reserves in the Prudhoe Bay
field.
“Projections indicate that the north
slope has potential reserves of as much as
80 billion barrels. Thus, we might someday
achieve an Alaska production of 5 to 8
million barrels per day.
“This, in turn, could reduce our first
round balance-of-trade outflows by 7
billion to 12 billion dollars per year.
Production at maximum rates would also
materially strengthen our bargaining
position with producing countries and
increase our ability to meet any surplus
disruptions with minimum adverse
economic consequences . . . But to obtain
the north slope’s full potential during the
critical period of the 1980s, we must begin
development now.”
There is no question that environmental
dangers are involved, nor is there any
doubt that a good case can be made for a
Trans-Canada pipeline carrying Alaskan
oil into the American heartland. As
arguments againsi going ahead with the
Trans-Alaskan pipeline, however, they
don’t hold water.
If Alaskan oil doesn’t come down to the
U.S. West Coast, the area will have to
depend all the more on foreign oil — oil
that will move in tankers not subject to the
special environmental safeguards decreed
by the interior department for tankers
from Alaska. Double tanker bottoms, for
example.
As for the alternative route across
Canada, it would pose environmental
hazards of its own.
Also, the longer that the Alaskan
pipeline is postponed, the greater will be
the pressure to open the spill-prone Santa
Barbara channel to full-scale drilling.
Then there is the question of jobs.
As Morton puts it, “Building the Alaska
line would create 26,000 construction jobs,
at peak, for American workers, plus 73,000
man-years of tanker construction, and 770
man-years of work for U.S. maritime
crews and maintenance. These jobs would
be lost if the pipeline goes through Canada,
because the Canadian government has
said it will give preference to Canadians.”
Finally there is the time factor.
If legal obstacles to the Alaskan pipeline
can be overcome by 1974, construction can
be completed by 1977 or 1978 because the
engineering has been done and the pipe is
already on hand. The Canadian route
would take an estimated five years longer
— every year of which would represent a
massive, unnecessary drain on the U.S.
balance of payments.
The fact is that both pipelines are
needed. The sensible thing is to go ahead,
as Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.) has
suggested, with the Trans-Alaska pipeline
while opening negotiations with the
Canadians.
Ernest Conine is a columnist for the Los
Angeles Times.
C. 1973 Los Angeles Times
Letters
Thieu
Your title to a Wednesday UPI Roundup,
“Thieu warns about Commies” may carry
a connotation of Thieu’s credibility, but the
article perpetuates the same old story.
Why do educated people still carelessly
refer to Thieu government actions and
possessions as those of the South Viet
namese? This may seem a trivial literary
point, but it is an expression of part of the
basis for the war in Indochina.
South Vietnam is a part of Vietnam.
Thieu’s government, the Republic of
Vietnam (which claims sovereignty over
all of Vietnam in its Constitution, by the
way), is one of two recognized government
administrations in South Vietnam. The
other is the •Provisional Revolutionary
Government of South Vietnam. The Nixon
administration may hope the PRG would
disappear, but it’s not these hopes you
were reporting, was it?
Dennis Gilbert
grad student
Daycare
This is in response to Joseph Vidali’s
letter of June 21st on the subject of the
ASUO Day Care controversy On several
occasions in recent months Vidali has
submitted to a fairly common compulsion.
He feels a need to write indignant (though
admittedly coherent) letters in reaction to
the slightest prospect that someone or
some group might get Something For
Nothing. However, in his last letter he
seems to have abandoned the modicum of
intelligence that has characterized his less
recent outbursts, and appears to have
moved forthrightly into the realm of
stupidity. I say this because the funding of
the ASUO Day Care facility makes
eminently good sense even within the
narrow confines of Mr. Vidali’s economic
world view.
-On the right
Trading with Brezhnev
Brezhnev says he simply cannot un
derstand why any American legislator
would want anything to stand in the way of
improved relations with the Soviet Union
in general, and improved commercial
relations with the Soviet Union in par
ticular. Specifically he argues against the
Jackson Amendment, which would deny
commercial advantages to the Soviet
Union unless it repealed the emigration
tax which it levies in particular against
Jews who desire to emigrate to Israel.
In pursuit of this goal, Brezhnev invited
top legislative leaders to lunch and talked
to them for several hours. His approach
was what one might call Russian Heavy.
To Senator Frank Church he said, “I have
seen pictures of you and I always knew I
would like you when I met you.” Senator
Church did not wince, although no doubt it
crossed his mind that the men Brezhnev
has liked during his long public career
have been those who have shown them
selves professionally adept at tyranny,
partners in the enterprise described by
Henry Kamm of the New York Times a
year or so back as “the greatest assault
ever mounted upon the human spirit.”
The term “improved” relations is one
that puzzles, mostly because it has come to
be used fetishistically. Beginning with the
material order, what is it the Soviet Union
has that we want? It is in moments of such
stress as this that words like “bauxite”
cross one’s lips.
Okay, and what else? Gas — ten years
from now. If we want gas that badly, why
not use some of our own, even at the risk of
squirting a can of oil on some Alaskan
tundra? Gold? We have gone out of the
business of buying gold. Dollars, yes. But
the Soviet Union has no dollars. The Soviet
Union has to come to American cor
porations to borrow dollars.
If Brezhnev in a swoon of enthusiasm
decided to elope with the United States,
there is absolutely nothing material he
could supply us with by way of dowry.
Don’t you understand, the Russians have
nothing to buy things from us with. They
have only American credit. All that they
can do for us is prospective. What we can
do for them is immediate. And the Com
munists want our help immediately
because they are in a hell of a jam
economically, and one is just cynical
enough to suspect that if they were not in
such an economic jam, Brezhnev would
find the profile of Senator Church less
alluring.
What can the Soviet Union give us of an
extra-material kind? Well: cultural ex
change. Have we not just finished signing
a cultural exchange agreement? Yes, and
it’s the same old thing again. Better than
nothing, but the equivalent of sending a
packet of band-aids into Hiroshima. A few
dozen graduate students, one or two
exhibitions in nine Russian cities,
maximum 28 days per city. The cultural
agreement is phrased that “both coun
tries” agree to so many students and “both
countries” to so many exhibitions and
“both countries” to so many art shows.
Hell, we couldn’t care less if the Soviet
Union sent over 100,000 students, if every
ballet dancer in Russia set out for
America, if Pravda brought in a million
copies a day of its Orwellian concentrate.
The fact of the matter is: You can’t buy a
single American periodical in Moscow.
The Voice of America and Radio Liberty
beamed into Russia are still jammed,
which is a deteriorated condition over that
of 1968, which is when jamming was
reimposed. Organic progress towards co
existence requires the free flow of in
formation. Brezhnev has shown no interest
whatever in this.
Finally we stand to gain from Russia
freedom for the captive nations, which
subject if it were raised in Brezhnev’s
presence would cause him to go home
shaking his fist. And we have to gain
genuine demilitarization. On this score,
the Soviet Union skunked Richard Nixon in
SALT I, reducing us to an inferior status
and freezing Soviet superiority in certain
fields. Thanks to yet another amendment
by Jackson (what would we do without
him?) the Senate is on record as opposed
to any further polarization of strength in
SALT II, concerning which Brezhnev has
not been heard to say a public word. And,
of course, to the extent we help him with
our economic credits, we ease the strain on
the Soviet Union’s productive capacity for
the manufacture of — arms.
“Grandmother, what big teeth you
have! ” Senator Church might have replied
to Brezhnev.
It can be demonstrated clearly that any
reasonable financial assistance to a
student who later completes college will be
repaid several times during that person’s
working lifetime. The college graduate’s
income is substantially higher, on the
average, than that of a person with less
education. The increased tax revenues
derived from that income repay many
times the original financial assistance.
(Not to mention the fact that the finan
cially assisted student who later graduates
is less likely to contribute to those nasty,
expensive social problems associated
with lower incomes and poorer
educations.)
So what you have here, Mr. Vidali, is an
opportunity to make a wise Investment,
which will pay you substantial Dividends
in the future. Not only will your share of
that onerous middle-class tax burden be
reduced later on, but you will help insure
that the children of the people who get
through school will have to rely less on the
honest efforts of hard working people like
you.
Besides, Joe, in five or ten years when
you zoom past those thriving Day Care
Centers in your Chrysler station wagon,
you’ll experience that warm glow in your
heart you get when you know you did the
right thing with your money.
Skip Wall
Student