I am now more convinced than ever that the United States — better than any other nation — can meet successfully whatever the future might bring. Thes… - Jimmy Carter

The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950's, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940's. During the 1960's, we used twice as much as during the 1950's. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of man's previous history combined. World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970's and 1980's by 5 percent a year, as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade. I know that many of you have suspected that some supplies of oil and gas are being withheld from the market. You may be right, but suspicions about the oil companies cannot change the fact that we are running out of petroleum.

A visiting pastor at our church in Plains once told a story about a priest from New Orleans. Father Flanagan’s parish lay in the central part of the city, close to many taverns. One night he was walking down the street and saw a drunk thrown out of a pub. The man landed in the gutter, and Father Flanagan quickly recognized him as one of his parishioners, a fellow named Mike. Father Flanagan shook the dazed man and said, “Mike!” Mike opened his eyes and Father Flanagan said, “You’re in trouble. If there is anything I can do for you, please tell me what it is.ℍ “Well, Father,” Mike replied, “I hope you’ll pray for me.” “Yes,” the priest answered, “I’ll pray for you right now.” He knelt down in the gutter and prayed, “Father, please have mercy on this drunken man.ℍ At this, a startled Mike woke up fully and said, “Father, please don’t tell God I’m drunk.ℍ Sometimes we don’t feel much of a personal relationship between God and ourselves, as though we have a secret life full of failures and sins that God knows nothing about. We want to involve God only when we plan to give thanks or when we’re in trouble and need help. But the rest of our lives, we’d rather keep to ourselves.

My preference is to have the wellhead tax receipts go to tax rebates. There are some alternatives that obviously will .be considered by the Congress with or without my approval, and I can't say that my own position will prevail ultimately. But there are different ways to use wellhead taxes. My preference is, as we presented it to the Congress, the rebates. One reason for that preference is that it's fair. Another one is that it doesn't create a tremendous withdrawal from the national economy of substantial amounts of money. If you have increased wellhead taxes and immediately return that money to people in better paychecks on a 2-week basis, then there's not a shock to the country. If you withdraw that money and wait 3 months, 6 months, or a year before it gets back into the economy, you have a tremendous dampening effect on our national economy, which is bad. Now, if some of the wellhead tax should be shifted to enhance the effectiveness of the energy goals, then I can't see anything very bad about that. If you had better rapid transit systems, better insulation of homes, more research and development, for instance, for new energy sources, that would be one thing. But the constant threat is that because of political pressures, that money is going to be returned to the oil companies under the guise of enhancing production. I think the oil companies have enough cash flow right now-- certainly the majors do--to have an adequate degree of exploration. In fact, that exploration, in my opinion, is adequate at this point. And I'm just as afraid that there is a threat that the wellhead tax is going to be given to the oil companies to reward them financially. I think that our package has a gracious plenty of incentives for enhanced exploration and enhanced production of oil in this country. We have by far the highest price for newly discovered oil in this energy package of anywhere on Earth, and I don't think the oil companies deserve to get this money taken out of the consumers' pockets and put in the pockets of the oil companies.