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C00002 00002		The world is desperately short of oil, and the OPEC monopoly
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	The world is desperately short of oil, and the OPEC monopoly
is holding us up for prices unrelated to the cost of production
using technology and capital investment exappropriated from us.
Six years after the first oil crisis, Congress is responding
with proposals for a crash program to develop a synthetic fuel
industry.  If large enough proposals are passed promptly and
implemented without bureaucratic delays, we still have a bad few
years ahead of us, but our ability to heat single family houses,
and the personal mobility that permits us to live where we want
and work anywhere in a metropolitan area will be retained.

	However, many people are worried that the present attempt
at energy independence will be sabotaged by the same people who
successfully sabotaged all attempts to respond to the 1973 crisis by encouraging
production.  President Nixon's Project Independence was the right
idea, but Nixon made no apparent effort to prevent his officials
from blocking it, and the Carter Administration has even more
people committted to blocking energy independence than did Nixon's.
While Carter himself is now talking about synthetic fuel, his Administration
has actually brought about a reduction of the feeble efforts of
the previous two.

	Like all crimes, this one has a motive and a method.