Energy saved = energy earned

Post and Courier
Monday, February 23, 2009

When crude-oil prices rise, so do gas prices. When crude-oil prices fall, so do gas prices — maybe ... eventually ... if we're lucky ... for a while. Now gas prices are climbing again, even though crude prices recently dropped to less than one quarter of last July's record high.

Those seemingly contradictory trends have fueled a rise in public indignation.

Some unhappy consumers contend that "Big Oil" is pulling a big scam. But an Associated Press story on this newspaper's front page a week ago today explained that the current upward spike in gas prices stems from an assortment of factors, including gasoline production being "cut off from its usual economic moorings," with steep differentials between crude prices in various markets.

And regardless of whom you blame for your intensifying pump pain, it's highly unlikely that the collapse of crude costs since last summer heralds a permanent return to the era of cheap gas.

Industry analysts cite reduced demand as a major factor in the remarkable descent in oil and gas costs over the last six months. Yet the economy, at some point, will recover, and so will global demand for petroleum products. Those who didn't learn last year's expensive lesson in the need to use fuel and overall energy more efficiently are bound to get an expensive refresher course soon enough.

All sides of the energy debate, regardless of whether they favor or oppose new coal plants, new nuclear plants, more domestic oil drilling and shifts to alternative sources, should agree that enhanced conservation of both fuel and electricity is a necessity, not an option.

We can't be sure what our fuel and electricity costs will be a year — or 10 years — from now. But we can be sure that they'll be much higher if we keep wasting vast amounts of energy.

At least for now Americans are complaining about gas costing $2 a gallon. That beats the heck out of last summer's complaining about gas costing $4 a gallon.

And regardless of where the gas price goes, the easiest way to minimize it is to reduce consumption.