Don’t lease Ohio’s state parks to oil and natural-gas drillers

Opinion: June 28, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

We the people of the great State of Ohio are on the verge of being assaulted (and insulted) by an arrogant majority of elected lawmakers in Columbus, who will make Senate Bill 5, or even Bernie Madoff scams, look like lunch-money thefts at grade school.

Ohio State Rep. Robert Hagan, D-Youngstown, is right on target in his protests of House Bill 133, the leasing of Ohio’s park lands to natural gas and crude oil speculators.

The Republicans beating the drums the loudest about the revenue Ohio will receive to upgrade Ohio parks are possibly the same people to whom private lobbyists for the gas and oil corporations are whispering “sweet somethings.”

What enormous chutzpah in trying to convince Ohio residents that corporations siphoning off oil and gas that we already own, then selling it back to us at astronomically inflated prices is a good deal. Oh, and don’t forget, Ohio will receive 12.5 cents on every dollar the corporations earn.

How about if we the people select a small group of common folks (headed up by Robert Hagan) to drill our own wells and sell the crude oil off at the going price of about $100 per barrel. That alone will generate enough money to upgrade all our parks.

Youngstown would be the perfect spot to make the steel and stamp out oil drums in new factories that would hire Valley workers.

As far as the natural gas under our state parks is concerned, Ohio need only look to the quickly modernizing nation of India, which is far ahead of America in manufacturing reasonably priced conversion kits. These kits will give all owners of gasoline-powered cars the choice of simply hitting a switch to operate on CNG (compressed natural gas). GM has a very profitable car factory in India that is producing cars that are easily adaptable. (Go Google if in doubt)

Then there is our esteemed, but always “reversed” Congress and Senate in Washington, D.C. Men and women who have offered “rebates” to Americans’ purchasing CNG conversion kits. However, in many states, as it is here in Ohio, there are only three places to replenish the CNG tanks, Columbus, Newark and Coshocton.

U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson recently opined in The Vindicator that Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania have more natural gas than Saudia Arabia has crude oil. If this is true, then we the people of Ohio keeping and reserving all of the natural gas in state parks to use in present and future vehicles is a no-brainer.

Young and old Ohioans alike need to stand up and light the torches and march on Columbus and Washington, D.C. Because very soon, “we the people” will be buckled to our knees by greedy elected officials interested only in the short-term pocketing of our money from our own natural resources.

David Metzler, North Jackson