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Patrick McHenry doesn't offer real plans for oil

Adam Roberts

Published: August 25, 2008

Morganton, N.C. - On Aug. 14, U.S. Rep. Patrick T. McHenry held one of his annual town hall meetings here in Burke County. I attended this event, hoping to come away with a basic idea of his goals and accomplishments for the 10th Congressional District. Without a doubt, Rep. McHenry's town hall meeting was an eye-opening experience for me.
The meeting focussed on America's energy crisis and McHenry's "solutions."
He began with alternative renewable energy – points I strongly agreed with until things took a turn for the worse. He began talking about the marvels of oil shale (a highly polluting and uneconomical idea) and nuclear energy and a host of other "solutions" for the short term. Unfortunately, in no way are these viable solutions to the problems we face today.
Nuclear energy, I think, could be a great source of energy, but there are great risks involved. As I pointed out at the town hall meeting, had the 9/11 hijackers directed one jet into the nuclear energy center 24 miles north of New York City, massive amounts of nuclear waste would have been unleashed. The results would have catastrophic, resulting in thousands of immediate deaths and many more in future generations.
When I pointed this out to our representative, he said protections are in place to prevent this and that I was "not factually correct" about this issue. He seems to have forgotten that it is not just the nuclear reactor that must be protected, but also the dry-cask storage facilities and the spent-fuel pools. Many experts know the security measures around these storage areas can be foiled, which is why many congressmen came together in the wake of 9/11 to join in increasing security measures for such nuclear sites.
To add more evidence to the contradict Rep. McHenry, one of the lead 9/11 plotters admitted nuclear energy sites were in the original plan for 9/11, but eventually were cut, simply because it was too difficult to attack so many targets.
If Patrick McHenry enjoys rejecting criticism by dismissing it as "not factually correct," maybe someone should take a look at his sources for facts. Numerous times in his presentation, he cited the American Petroleum Institute, a U.S. trade association which represents many aspects of the oil industry. And ANWR.org actually declares it's an organization "working to expedite approval of oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
Even when delivering a seemingly real fact, Rep. McHenry finds a way to skew the truth. In his presentation, he said that drilling for oil offshore would power around 60 million cars for 60 years, while neglecting to mention that there are currently 250 million cars on the road and our population is only growing.
He fails to mention that there are no reliable ways to know for how much oil is located offshore. The oil companies don't even know yet whether or not much of the drilling would be of economic benefit for them.
Let's just hope that the voters in the 10th Congressional District of North Carolina learn the real facts before November and vote for a real voice in Congress like Democrat Daniel Johnson, a former Navy veteran who offers real plans and uses real facts to back himself up.